TWELVE LECTURES 



HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE CINCINNATI 
TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION. 



fl^EXS 



i 



W. N. HAILMAN, A. M., 

Author of " Kindergarten Culture " and " Object Teaching. 




WILSON, HINKLE & CO., "*'^~*^"^ 

No. 137 Walnut Stkket, No. 28 Bond Street, 

CINCINNATI. 1^7^, NEW YORK. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

WILSON, HINKLE & CO., 

In tlie Office of tlie Librarian of Congress, at WashiDgton, D. C. 



ELF.CTUUTYPED AT THE FRANKLIN TYPE FOUNDKY, CINCINNATI. 



PEEFAOE 



The twelve lectures on the History of Pedagogy, 
offered to the profession in this little volume, were 
delivered before the Cincinnati Teachers' Institute, in 
the summer of 1873. At the instance of Superin- 
tendent Hancock and many of the teachers who 
listened to the lectures, I have concluded to publish 
them in the present form. 

It is needless to say that I do not claim to present 

even an abbreviated history of pedagogy. My aim 

was to sketch, in a concise form, the gradual growth 

of the leading principles of modern education, singling 

out for this purpose a few of the most prominent 

thinkers and workers in the field of pedagogy. 

The great majority of teachers, on entering the pro- 

(iii) 



IV PREFACE. 

fession, have had little opportunity of becoming ac- 
quainted with principles and methods of teaching, 
and confine themselves mainly to the imitation of 
their teachers. This is apt to make their teaching 
mechanical, soulless, devoid of high aims, so that they 
exercise very little if any influence upon the develop- 
ment of intelligence and character in the pupils; it 
prevents them from asserting their own individuality 
in their work, and thus keeps them from develojDing 
individuality in their pupils. At the same time, they 
are unable, for want of a firm basis, to contribute to 
the growth of correct principles in the profession, and 
are thus rather an impediment to progress. 

It is true that, in the course of years, a number of 
them, by dint of experience and some study, become 
valuable, ''live" members of the profession; but this 
entails a serious loss of time. Besides, the number of 
those who leave the profession without having done it 
any good, or w^ho become petrified in certain fixed prac- 
tices, is much greater. 

To contribute to the abrogation of these evils is the 
object of this little volume. It is believed, too, that 



PREFACE. V 

a sketch like this, laying almost exclusive stress upon 
the most important principles that should underlie all 
education, and not encumbered with less important or 
even useless details and facts, will do more good in this 
direction than a complete, exhaustive history of peda- 
gogy; nay, that the perusal of such a sketch, while it 
invites to the careful study of the history of pedagogy, 
is in most cases almost indispensable for a correct ap- 
preciation and application of historical facts subse- 
quently acquired. 

On this account, too, this little volume will be found 
more suitable, more fruitful of good results, as a text- 
book in normal and training schools, than more elab- 
orate treatises on the same subject, which, while they 
pay great attention to dates and minor details, neglect 
the drift, the essential spirit of the subjects under 
consideration. 

In the preparation of the lectures — not originally 
designed for publication — I made use, in some cases 
rather freely, of previous publications from my pen, 
without, however, impairing the value of the sketch, 
whatever that may be. I'he principal sources from 



Vi PREFACE. 

which I took facts, and in many cases views, are 
Barnard's School Journal, Schmidt's, Raumer's, Kruse's, 
Dittes's writings, and other works on the history of 
pedagogy, and the original writings of the pedagogic 
heroes introduced in the book. 

May the little volume do its allotted share of good. 

W. N. H. 



Louisville, ] 



April, 1874. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTUEE I. 

PAGE 

Importance of History of Pedagogy — China and Japan . 9 

LECTUEE II. 

Greece : General Features— Sparta — Lycurgus — Pythagoras — 
Athens— Solon 18 

LECTUEE III. 
Greece: Socrates— Plato— Aristotle 31 

LECTUEE IV. 

Eome: Numa Pompilius— General Characteristics — Advent 
of Greek Culture— Cicero— Seneca — Quintilian . . 42 

LECTUEE V. 

Christianity — The Sixteenth Century — Bacon — Comenius . 52 

LECTUEE VI. 

Locke — Francke ..63 

(vii) 



vni CONTEXTS. 

LECTURE YII. 
Rousseau 74 

LECTURE VIIL 

Influence of Modern Philosopliers: Kant— Fiehte— Riehter— 
Schopenhauer— Hegel — Rosenkranz—Herbart—Benecke 
— Spencer 85 

LECTURE IX. 
Pestalozzi: Biographical 93 

LECTURE X. 
Pestalozzi: His Principles and Views 105 

LECTURE XL 
Frederic Froebel— Kindergarten Culture .... 114 

LECTURE XII. 
Summing up — Conclusion 123 



LECTURE I. 

IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY — CHINA AND JAPAN. 

The history of any art or science is the great recepta- 
cle of the thoughts and achievements in that art or 
science; hence it furnishes the basis of progress. The 
man who re-invents the steam-engine to-da}^ proves 
himself a master mind; but his mastership does not 
benefit the race, which is already in possession of the 
steam-engine. On the other hand, the race would have 
been benefitted by the labors of this master mind if he 
had devoted his energies to the same field on the basis 
of James Watt's achievements. Thus, in education, 
too, the teacher who, ignorant of Pestalozzi's and Froe- 
bel's principles, re-discovers one or more of these, proves 
thereby that he is the peer of these pedagogic heroes, 
but his labors yield no gain to the race, and he w^ould 
have been a much more useful member of the craft had 
he, even with inferior powers, devoted himself to the 
propagation of the principles discovered — to the apostle- 
ship, as it were, of Pestalozzi and Froebel. 

Again, if we consider that the empiric in physical 
science must waste a great amount, not only of time 

(9) 



10 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

and working force, but also of material, in order to 
arrive at his results, we are justified in looking upon 
him as an absolutely injurious member of society, who 
destroys where he would create. Yet, in view of the 
abundance of inorganic material and its apparent in- 
difference, we may forgive him his blundering, and 
while we pity him, we may still honor him. Not so 
with the blunderer in educational matters, whose mate- 
rial lives and grows, and, in consequence of his mis- 
takes, may live and grow into misery and crime. Such 
a blunderer becomes a curse to society, and should not 
be countenanced. Indeed, it is no hyperbole if educa- 
tional empiricism, in the family as well as in the school, 
is designated as "murder of the innocents." 

How little this fact is generally appreciated, appears 
from the indifference of parents and average school 
authorities to the preparation of those whom they em- 
ploy, in the very things which are of the greatest im- 
jDortance. The future teacher is examined in a number 
of arts and sciences, but little or no heed is given to 
his or her proficiency in educational principles and in 
pedagogic skill. The training of the youngest pupils, 
most easily impressed for good or evil, is still, in the 
majority of cases, intrusted to the least experienced, for 
the sake of economizing expense. In consequence of 
the numerous failures of so many who claim to do the 
teacher's work, the teacher's profession still struggles in 
a sort of disrepute, which exposes its votaries to want of 
confidence, to an income wholly incommensurate with the 
responsibilities, to the indignity of being re-examined 
again and again on the most absurd basis, and of feeling 
an annual nervousness concerning re-appointment. 



ITS IMPORTANCE. 11 

There can be little doubt that these unfortunate facts 
are due mainly to professional ignorance and to a con- 
sequent utter demoralization of professional ethics. An 
irrefutable proof for this assertion is found in the 
marked improvement that characterizes the professional 
status of a few favored localities where talent, knowl- 
edge, and skill have attained at least a partial triumph. 

It is evident that a knowledge of the history of edu- 
cation, an acquaintance with the thoughts of earnest 
men that have gone before us, a familiarity with the 
results of faithful laborers in similar fields, an intimacy 
with their struggles, their martyrdom, or their triumph, 
Avill do much to enhance our efficiency, as well as our 
professional self-respect, while, at the same time, it will 
rid us of every vestige of self-complacent pedantry and 
indolent, servile submission to arbitrary authority. 
While it will enable us to profit by the failures, as well 
as by the successes of our predecessors, it will teach us 
still to look ahead, and to strain every nerve in earnest, 
thoughtful efforts to approach the yet distant ideal. 

In its widest sense, the history of education would be 
the history of the development of the human race. 
For the teacher specifically, however, it deals mainly 
with the intentional, systematic influence exercised by 
older individuals of the race upon younger ones, with a 
view of fitting them for life. It deals with the efforts 
made by the family, the school, the church, and similar 
organizations, to make the young suitable and more or 
less self-dependent members of the community. It can 
not ignore the influence of individual propensities and 
of external circumstances, but it attends to them only so 
far as they have a marked effect upon the direct educa- 



12 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

tional efforts of family, school, and similar organizations. 
Among these organizations, again, the school will claim 
the greatest share of the teacher's attention. There are 
other limits, such as the degree of civilization of a state, 
the authenticity of its history, etc. ; but these the his- 
tory of education shares with all history, so that I need 
not dwell upon them here. 

In the short course of lectures that you had the kind- 
ness to assign to me, it becomes, moreover, necessary to 
single out for study a few of the numerous threads that 
form the historical complex. In the selection of these, 
I have thought it best to choose those that have led to 
the new developing education, thus supplementing, to 
a limited extent, the lectures which I had the honor 
to deliver before you last year. 

It is, then, ni}^ pleasant task to review with you the 
thoughts and deeds of a few earnest teachers of various 
times and nations, whose wisdom has gradually j)ro- 
cured us the conviction that man is an organic being, 
subject, in all his manifestations of life, to laws of 
organic growth or development from within outward; 
that society is a similar though more complex organ- 
ism ; and that the aim of education must be the devel- 
opment of independent individualities, fitted for life in 
societ}^, capable of happiness and efficient for usefulness, 
on the basis of morality and reason. 

With such an aim, we find little to interest us in our 
search for data prior to the Greeks, and little outside 
of the Caucasian race. Only the Chinese and Japanese 
deserve a passing notice, more, however, because among 
them we find, in almost every respect, the opposite of 
our aims clearly crystallized. 



CHINA AND JAPAN. 13 

Although Kong — who lived among the Chinese 500 
years before Christ, whom they reverentially call "the 
Teacher," and who is esteemed among us under the 
Latinized name of Confucius — declared that the destiny 
of man is to perfect himself, their entire educational 
system aims at limits so rigidly fixed that further de- 
velopment is impossible. Their scope of thought, their 
manners and customs, the entire social fabric, every 
thing that relates to the life of man, has assumed posi- 
tive, unalterable forms; and the aim of Chinese educa- 
tion is the faithful transmission of old, established views 
and facts — the strict training in old, established usage. 
A free, independent development of human powers is 
not known; individuality is imprisoned within the 
walls of settled rules; the principle of stability is the 
criterion of this education which is eminently practical, 
egotistical, conventional, technical. 

This view of the aim of education guides pedagogic 
practice in every direction. Physical life is protected, 
nursed, and subjected to strict discipline, because it 
determines the utility and the welfare of the individual; 
the muscles are trained to nimbleness and skill, because 
these are needed in the observance of a complicated cer- 
emonial and in a number of trades ; play and recreation 
are allowed to the young, to give them new vigor for 
new efforts. But calisthenic and gymnastic exercises, 
in the interest of general culture, find no place in the 
Chinese system of education, because their influence 
upon the entire organism of man, upon the physical 
economy as well as upon the intellect, the will, and the 
aesthetic sense, is not understood. 

Morally, the aim is decorous conduct, but not moral 



14 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

strength and moral feeling. Here usage and law enter 
with pedantic minuteness into every detail of life. 
Every motion, every position of the body, the number 
and depth of bows, the entire social ceremonial is pre- 
scribed for every imaginable case of intercourse with 
others. A complicated system of formalities, of police 
regulations and fines, usurps the place of plain truth, 
justice, and love. The voice of feeling and of conscience 
is drowned in usage and written law. The child learns 
how it must speak, stand, walk, and sit, but not how it 
shall feel and think. Hence result servility toward 
superiors and cruelt}^ toward inferiors; dissimulation, 
falsehood, deceit, and a heartless egotism stalk abroad 
in the garb of conventional decorum and legality. 

Hence, too, on the other hand, self-control, love of 
order, punctuality, industry, perseverance, prudence, 
caution, sobriety are the national virtues of the Chinese. 
But the higher interests of human nature, the cheerful 
exercise of pure morality, disinterested devotion to great 
ideas, apjDreciation of human dignity, desire for self- 
improvement, are almost wholly crushed in the iron 
fetters of practical life; so that the miserable human 
being, reduced almost to a machine, can find a sort of 
happiness only in the satisfaction of sensual appetites. 
Similarly, too, the religious life of the Chinese has, in 
the course of time, become petrified in unmeaning form- 
alism, with no influence upon the sentiments of the 
worshipers. 

A great deal of attention is paid to intellectual cul- 
ture. Schools of all descriptions exist throughout the 
empire, and they are accessible to all. Who learns 
most attains the highest public oftice, even if he is the 



CHINA AND JAPAN. 15 

son of the poorest laborer. The claims of applicants are 
sifted by the most searching competitive examinations, 
in which every precaution is taken to prevent decep- 
tion. As soon as the Chinese boy is five years old he 
starts to school ; and, although there is no law of com- 
pulsory education, personal interest and usage bring 
about a well-nigh universal and exceedingly regular 
attendance of the elementary schools, in which reading, 
writing, arithmetic, and lessons on common things 
constitute the curriculum. 

The method of instruction is exclusively dogmatical, 
without a trace of developing elements; for positive 
knowledge and routine are the only aims of the teacher's 
labor, so that there is no time left for experiment and 
reflection. Telling and showing, strict discipline, and 
constant watchfulness constitute the task of the Chinese 
teacher; attentive listening, careful memorizing, faithful 
imitating, punctual and prompt reciting make up the 
business of the learner. 

Thus, reading is taught in the following manner: 
the book, entitled ''''Key to the Regions of Classical and 
Historical Literature^^^ is opened, and the teacher com- 
mences to read. The pupils, each one of whom has a 
book, repeat every word uttered by the teacher, pointing 
to the word with the forefinger, and looking intently at 
the printed symbol. Only one line is read, and this is 
repeated until the pupils have caught the pronuncia- 
tion of every symbol, and are enabled to read the line 
without the teacher's assistance. After this, they must 
learn it by heart. This they do in a loud voice, each 
boy calling out the sounds to himself, until they are 
impressed upon his memory. As soon as he knows the 



16 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

line by heart, he brings his book to the teacher, turns 
his back upon him, and recites the line. Then the 
teacher proceeds to the next line, until the whole book 
is learned by heart. No attention is paid to the mean- 
ing of the words and sentences, so that the pupil may 
read the whole book fluently without the least under- 
standing of its contents. Explanations are reserved for 
the higher schools; but here, too, they have an exclu- 
sively dogmatic character. 

Similarly writing is taught. The copies, set by the 
teacher, are placed under translucent paper, and the 
pupil follows the lines of the cop}^ with his brush, until 
it is found that he can write independently. 

This, with the very rudiments of arithmetic, or rather 
counting, and a few snatches of lessons on common 
things, constitutes the school learning of the majority, 
and furnishes the basis for more extended instruction, 
on a similar plan, in the higher schools. School educa- 
tion is confined almost exclusively to the male sex, and 
girls rarely receive any instruction. 

On the other hand, the Japanese, who assign to 
woman, in every respect, a much higher position, edu- 
cate also the girls in school. The general plan of 
schools and schooling is, however, in all essential feat- 
ures, similar to that of the Chinese. Nevertheless, the 
Japanese, distinguished by greater energy and inde- 
pendence of character, have saved a spark of progress- 
iveness which, under recent astonishing developments, 
promises to burst into a magnificent flame, destined to 
consume all that is cruel, inhuman, and exclusive in 
Mongolian civilization, and to change the latter into a 
worthy competitor of the more favored Caucasian sister. 



CHINA AND JAPAN. 17 

Thus, thanks to the respect which these nations have 
ever accorded to knowledge, to intellectual eminence, 
and, formerly at least, to moral worth ; thanks to the 
philanthropic spirit that characterizes their institu- 
tions; thanks to the democratic impartiality with 
which they admit at least every male to the temple of 
science, and open for him the path to glory and dis- 
tinction; they may yet, fertilized by occidental pro- 
gressiveness, become thoroughly humanized — a truly 
free and happy people. 

On the other hand, the Hindoos, Egyptians, and 
Persians, with their notorious caste institutions, that 
render individual development and emancipation ab- 
solutely impossible, that confine ever}^ man within 
arbitrary limits, according to his parentage, and make 
him an abject slave of a despotic church or state, have 
been doomed, by the logical justice of events, to a 
well-deserved oblivion or absorption by more vigorous 
peoples. We should find little to repay our efforts in 
the educational history of these, and we may therefore, 
without fear of loss, turn our attention at once to Greece, 
the great fountain-head of Western civilization. 



H. P.-2. 



LECTURE II. 

GREECE : GENERAL FEATURES — SPARTA — LYCURGUS — 
PYTHAGORAS — ATHENS — SOLON. 

The Greek ideal of education is expressed by them 
in a magnificent word, combining in its elements "the 
beautiful and the good." Greek education aims at 
external and internal beauty and goodness; physical 
and psychical vigor, health, and energy; the harmoni- 
ous culture of all the powers of body and soul. This is 
the general outcome of their educational efforts, although 
they were, at no time, and among none of the numerous 
tribes, fully faithful to it, even in theory. While, during 
the heroic age, physical and moral culture claimed their 
greatest attention, intellectual culture preponderated in 
later ages. Again, education bore in each tribe or state 
an individual character, more or less removed from the 
general formula. 

From Homer's occasional pictures of family life, we 
gather that, during the heroic age, education was to a 
great extent patriarchal. The cliildren were attached 
with filial piety to their parents. The father taught 
his son by example and precept, imparting to him 
(18) 



GREECE. 19 

physical vigor and skill, and an intensely religious dis- 
position. Similarly, the mother educated the daughter 
into a skillful and virtuous housewife. Later, at the 
dawn of the historical age of Greece, family life and 
family education were lost in state life and state educa- 
tion. At the same time, the Greeks were, from the 
beginning of this period, divided into several distinct 
and frequently hostile tribes, each one of which followed 
a different political and pedagogic direction. 

It is true that in Greece, and more especially in 
Athens, the human powders enjoyed a freer development 
than in the great despotic empires of the East ; but the 
Greek, too, did not attain his highest value as an indi- 
vidual or as a member of his family, but only as a 
member of his state. The independent w^orth of man 
and the significance of domestic life were never appre- 
ciated in Greece. She never enjoyed a universal edu- 
cation of the people ; nay, the number of persons fully 
free and entitled to unlimited participation in national 
education and in public life was very small, compared 
with the number of the partially free, the serfs and 
slaves. At the same time, we have positive accounts 
only from the Dorians and lonians — from Sparta and 
Athens — that the state looked upon education as a 
public concern. 

Even the approximate data of the invasion and con- 
quest of the southern Peleponesus by the Dorians has 
been lost. Yet this is established, that the native pop- 
ulation, probably Acheans, were ever after held in 
subjection. Those who had submitted voluntarily re- 
tained a limited part of their lands and their personal 
libertv, but had no share in the government. Those 



20 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

who had to be subdued by the force of arms were 
reduced to the most abject slavery. The former were 
distinguished by the name of Perioeci; the latter were 
the Helots. Neither of these had any share in the 
political economy of Sparta; and all that is known of 
Spartan education has exclusive reference to the 9,000 
families of the conquerors, who constituted a supreme 
caste, exercising despotic sway over their unfortunate 
subjects. But within this ruling caste a remarkable 
community of interests prevailed — a community of 
interests so intense that all individuality was crushed 
in the iron grasp of the social fabric. 

The principal object of Spartan education was the 
maintenance of the existing political system, the per- 
petuation of the supremacy of the ruling class, or caste. 
Hence physical strength and warlike skill were the 
leading objective points. With reference to the subor- 
dinate castes, Sparta's education was aristocratic ; with 
reference to the surroun^ling states, military. The code 
of laws, which fixed with inflexible vigor all the details 
by which this aim was to be attained, is ascribed, 
mythically perhaps, to Lycurgus, whose doubtful exist- 
ence is referred to the ninth century before Christ. 
This code regulates even marital relations in every 
detail, with a view to physically vigorous descendants. 
But the children did not belong to the parents; they 
belonged to the state. The new-born infant was 
brought before certain officers of state, and if it was 
found to be sickly or deformed, it was not permitted 
to live. 

The healthy and well-formed boys were left with 
their parents until their seventh year, where they 



GREECE. 21 

were brought up with the greatest simplicity. In 
their seventh year they were removed to special com- 
mon schools or, rather, common homes; for henceforth 
they passed their youth in these. In their eighteenth 
year they left these common homes and entered mili- 
tary service. The girls were left in the parental home, 
where they acquired, under the mother's direction, the 
arts of spinning, of weaving, and of controlling slaves ; 
they, too, however, had to appear at stated times in 
public places for gymnastic exercises, similar to those 
of the boys. Indeed, woman occupied among the Spar- 
tans a much higher position than in the rest of Greece, 
as is indicated by the fact that the Doric tribe can boast 
of quite a number of poetesses. Her physical pre-emi- 
nence is most forcibly indicated in one of the plays 
of Aristophanes, where an Athenian lady exclaims to 
a Spartan sister: "How beautiful you are! how fresh 
your skin ! how swelling your form ! you could strangle 
an ox." 

The gymnastic exercises, which formed the principal 
burden of Spartan education, consisted mainly of the 
celebrated jjentathlium, or five-fold contest. It embraced 
leaping, running, wrestling, throwing of the javelin or 
spear, and of the discus or quoit. These five exercises 
formed the classical cycle of gymnastics. Brutal boxing 
and professional athletics are not found before the de- 
cline of Greece. 

Intellectual culture was confined in Sparta almost 
exclusively to music ; and, even here, the burden of the 
songs and hymns was mainly of a moral and religious 
character, tending to arouse and to strengthen valor and 
patriotism, or to glorify the gods. The boys and youths 



22 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

were instructed in the use of the seven-stringed l3^re, or 
cithera, and were taught to sing singly and in chorus, 
and to accompany their songs with rhythmical marches 
and dances. Reading and writing formed no part of 
Spartan education, and was left to private efforts in 
leisure hours. There was a little rudimentary arith- 
metic, and a little astronomy ; but the higher arts and 
sciences found no home here; and oratory, as well as 
the drama, was prohibited. On the other hand, the 
understanding was trained with great care; the young" 
were taught to form accurate and clear ideas about 
their surroundings, and accustomed to brevity and con- 
densation of expression (laconism), and to promptness 
in answering. At the same time, truthfulness, simplic- 
ity, self-control, and well-nigh absolute self-denial, were 
constantly inculcated by example, precept, and practice. 
In short, a warlike spirit, military fitness, strength of 
character, reverence for the gods, and patriotism, were 
the ultimate ends of Spartan education. Science and 
art, as well as heart-culture, were neglected. The Spar- 
tan was the limit of all individual progress; to go, or 
even to aim beyond this, Avas in many cases a crime; 
in all cases, distasteful. 

Such an organism — if, indeed, such a society can be 
honored by this name — can not have permanence, and 
does not deserve it, however perfect it may appear when 
viewed absolutely. Hence, as soon as she had shown 
her power in the Peloponnesian war, and had satisfied 
her thirst for conquest, Sparta degenerated and lingered 
inglorious! y out of existence. 

Before leaving the Dorian system of education, we 
must, however, throw a glance upon its noblest repre- 



GREECE. 23 

sentative, Pythagoras. He was born on the island of 
Samos, about the 3^ear 570 B. C. Introduced to the love 
of wisdom by Thales, Anaximander, and other great 
men of his time, he undertook extensive travels in Asia 
and Egypt, in order to perfect himself. After his return, 
he found so little encouragement among his Samian 
countrymen, that he concluded to emigrate. After a 
short stay at Creta, where he was initiated into the 
holy mysteries, and at Sparta, where he became familiar 
with the code of Lycurgus, he turned to the Greek colo- 
nies of lower Italy, known at that time by the name of 
Magna Grsecia, and settled in the city of Croton. Here 
his personal appearance and eloquence, as well as his 
wisdom and virtue, not only won him the respect and 
admiration of the inhabitants, but enabled him to ban- 
ish, as by charm, all kinds of vices from the people, and 
to plant in their stead the seeds of virtue. 

In addition to his lectures to the adult population, 
he founded here a great school for the education of 
youth. In the selection of his pupils he was exceed- 
ingly careful, inquiring minutely into all the details 
of their character and disposition, especially their sus- 
ceptibility and obedience. The school itself consisted 
of two courses, the exoteric and the esoteric course. 
The time of education comprised usually five years, 
from the twelfth to the seventeenth year of age. 

During the first three years the pupils were in the 
exoteric course. During this time they received little 
direct attention ; they listened and obeyed, learned 
what they were taught, and were not permitted to ask 
any questions, even when they desired explanation. 
The master delivered his discourses to the esoterics in 



24 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

a room separated from the exoterics by a curtain, so 
that the latter were not allowed to see him or to have 
personal intercourse with him during the hours of in- 
struction. At the end of the three years, they were 
subjected to a rigid examination, and, if they proved 
to be sufficiently docile, if their powers of attention and 
memory enabled them to follow a discourse, if they had 
the j^assions under full control, they were admitted to 
the esoteric circle, and to full communion with the 
master. The pupils spent their whole time at the 
school, and formed a kind of family, that defrayed its 
expenses from a common fund, into which the pupils 
deposited their fortunes on entering the school, and 
which was administered by the pupils themselves, 
through the medium of officers whom they selected. 

Although Pythagoras was not a Dorian, either by 
birth or by abode, his system of pedagogy was Doric in 
the purity and strictness of its morals ; in the implicit 
obedience it required; in its positive, authoritative 
method : in the scanty diet to which it subjected the 
pupils ; in the importance given to gymnastics ; in its 
seclusion from the common people ; in its aristocratic 
tendencies throughout. 

In the school itself, religious ceremonies and contem- 
plation occupied an important place. In addition to 
music, mathematics, physics, geography, and meta- 
physics, were the favorite pursuits of the Pythago- 
reans. The method of instruction was strictly dog- 
matic. Knowledge was transmitted in short, condensed 
sentences, which invited to reflection by their form, as 
well as by their contents. For instance : " What are 
the islands of the blest?" "Sun and moon." Or: 



GREECE. 25 

"What is the wisest thing?" "Measure and number." 
" What the most beautiful ? " " Harmony." " The most 
powerful?" "Intelligence." "The best?" "Happi- 
ness." Or : " The beginning is one-half of the whole." 
" The ocean is a tear." " The sound of a metal is the 
voice of an imprisoned spirit." Or : " It is man's duty 
to marry and raise children, so that the deity may 
have worshipers and servants." 

In other respects, his method had many excellent 
features ; he gave little at one time, proceeded in strict 
continuity, required full assimilation of the given ma- 
terial. On the other hand, he did not seem to appre- 
ciate the insufficiency of the scientific attainments 
of his time, and taught many mere hypotheses and 
fancies, in the voice of a prophet, as established truths. 
The faults of his system bore their legitimate fruits 
after the death of the great master. His school became, 
in one direction, a kind of political club with aristo- 
cratic principles, directing its efforts against the liberty 
of the people. In another direction, it became an arro- 
gant school-sect, which, with its secret wisdom, deemed 
itself infinitely superior to the rest of mankind. Thus 
it aroused the distrust and hatred of the citizens, and 
died, not without persecution, about 300 years B. C. It 
is doubtful whether modern pedagogy has profitted b}^ 
the example of the Pythagorean school. We still see, 
now and then, vast structures raised on the basis of a 
few correct ideas; structures in which all knowledge 
and all wisdom find a resting-place. 

As the Dorian system of education was based, in its 

main features, upon the legislation of Lycurgus, so 

Ionian culture rested upon a code of laws devised by 
H. p. -8. 



26 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

Solon, ^olon was born at Athens about the year 639 
B. C. His integrity, his wisdom, his justice and piety, 
his humanity and patriotism, gained him the affection 
of the Athenians, and, about the year 594 B. C, he was 
elected chief ruler of the commonwealth, and invested 
w4th unlimited dictatorial power. He availed himself 
of his position to give to Athens a social and political 
constitution, by far less aristocratic than that of the 
Spartans. True, it left nearly three-fourths of the in- 
habitants in a state of slaver}-, less intolerable, however, 
than that of the Spartan helots; but lie abolished serf- 
dom for debt, by which, heretofore, many free-born citi- 
zens had lost their liberty. It is true, too, that he 
recognized a kind of aristocracy, by dividing the free 
citizens into four classes; but it depended on wealth 
and not on birth, so that the free citizens of the lowest 
class could, by means of energy or luck, reach the 
highest. And although the magistrates could be se- 
lected only from the three higher classes, all free citi- 
zens took part in the sovereign popular assemblies and 
in the juries; so that, in opi30sition to the eminently 
and thoroughly aristocratic Spartan institutions, the 
Athenians could boast of being members of a kind of 
democratic commonwealth. On the whole, his laws 
set no limits to the free development of the powers of 
the people, and favored more especially intellectual 
progress. 

But we are more particularly concerned with the 
educational features of the Athenian republic. Since 
the character of a state depends upon the character of 
its citizens, Solon's code paid much attention to educa- 
tion. He considered the parents as the masters of the 



GREECE. 27 

children, but prohibited the sale of girls, which was 
still customary among the Athenians. He did not 
forbid the exposing of children, but the humane tend- 
encies of the Athenian mind — due, undoubtedly, to 
his wise legislation — gradually abrogated this inhuman 
practice. 

The boys were to learn at least the arts of swimming 
and reading, as well as some industrial, agricultural, or 
commercial pursuit, by which they might gain their 
living. He recommended the wealthy, at the same 
time, to have their sons instructed in gymnastics, 
music, mathematics, poetry, and philosophy. If the 
father failed to do his duty in the education of his son, 
he had no claims to the support of his son in old age; 
while all well-educated young men were obliged to take 
care of their parents, and forfeited public honor and 
civil rights by neglecting this duty. 

Athenian education was a common affair of the family 
and of the state. The wealth, insight, and good-will of 
the father determined to what extent his sons might 
avail themselves of public or private educational insti- 
tutions. Compulsory education, like that of our time, 
did not exist; the state was satisfied with offering to 
the rising male population gratuitous instruction, and 
with exciting in all parents a lively interest to let their 
sons avail themselves of this instruction. The consti- 
tution of the state, the condition of industry and com- 
merce, the numerous public monuments of art, the 
character of religion, the theater, the publicity of polit- 
ical life and of the administration of justice, the absence 
of all castes, and the fact that every free-born male could 
work his way to the highest culture and to the highest 



28 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

offices, conspired to the universal arousal and develop- 
ment of intellectual vigor; and no city in the world has 
done as much as Athens for the culture of the human 
race. 

Still we find that even Athens was very far removed 
from the ideal education of our days. In the first place, 
the children of the slaves were, as a rule, excluded from 
the education of the free-born; for they were in every 
respect private property, and had no share in public 
life. With reference to female education, Athens was 
even inferior to Sparta. Unlike the Spartan women, 
the women of Athens had no share in public education, 
not the shadow of a direct influence upon public con- 
cerns, and very little authority even at home ; they 
were looked upon as inferior beings, and were treated 
with almost Oriental contempt. 

For the boys, the gymnasia were the most important 
educational institutions. They Avere public places and 
buildings similar to the gymnasia of Sparta. Their 
expenses were defrayed from the public treasury, and 
gymnastics formed, in the beginning at least, their 
main field of pedagogic influence. In the course of 
time, however, they became the centers of all higher 
intellectual life, taking in every respect the place of 
our higli-schools and universities. Still, even in the 
beginning, the Athenians laid more stress, in their 
gymnastic courses, upon plastic beauty, while the Spar- 
tans were satisfied with agility and strength. 

In addition we find, at an early period, elementary 
schools, in which boys from seven to twelve years old 
were taught the arts of reading and writing, and re- 
ceived instruction in literature and arithmetic; these 



GREECE. 29 

were, probably, also maintained at public cost. There 
can be little doubt that these elementary schools were 
especially instrumental in adding intellectual culture 
to the curriculum of the gymnasia, which became the 
public schools for the boys from the twelfth year of age 
upward. 

For reading, the elementary schools used the spelling 
method, acquainting the pupil first with the letters, 
which were compounded successively into syllables, 
words, sentences. Writing consisted in mere imitation 
of set copies. Arithmetic was a rare accomplishment, 
few progressing beyond the art of counting on their 
fingers. Higher intellectual culture that could not be 
found in the elementary schools (pedagogiums) or gym- 
nasia, was a private affair; but the number of private 
schools and private teachers, shows that it was the de- 
sire and purpose of a vast number to avail themselves 
of such culture for their sons. During leisure hours the 
boys passed their time in the company of their parents, 
or engaged in social games similar to those in which 
our boys delight to-day, where the military drill sj^stem 
of the school and police regulations are not in the way. 

Athenian education aimed at a harmonious develop- 
ment of all the powers; it would produce independence 
of character, self-confidence ; it required careful observa- 
tion of circumstances and of persons, vigor and prudence, 
energy and wisdom ; it would make the Athenian patri- 
otic and brave, a lover of liberty and of virtue, of science 
and art, of the good and the beautiful. 

Yet their education had one great fault, suffered from 
one great falsehood, as it Avere, which ultimately caused 
its decay: it was thoroughly particularistic. Not the 



30 HISTOKY OF PEDAGOGY. 

harmoniously developed, aesthetically cultivated, beauti- 
ful and good human being was its aim; but the Athe- 
nian, or, at best, the Greek. Their education lacked a 
high moral ideal of pure humanity. 

Nations whose education has this fault, no matter 
how perfect they may be in other respects, always die, 
and ought to die. Nations, as well as individuals, that 
aim at ideals which they can attain, ultimately cease to 
progress; or, in other words, begin to perish as soon as 
the ideals are reached. 



LECTURE III. 

GREECE : SOCRATES — PLATO — ARISTOTLE. 

The elements of decay, mentioned at the close of the 
last lecture, did not exist in the principles and practice 
of a few gifted teachers, among whom I shall single out 
for rapid review Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. There 
was so much of the purely humane in these great men, 
that, even to-day, they stand out as brilliant examples 
of wisdom and virtue, as earnest searchers after truth, 
unbiased by national or other prejudices. 

So far, indeed, was Socrates in advance of his country- 
men in this respect, that the very ideas which have 
secured him immortality among men, and the grateful 
reverence of every lover of truth, were looked upon by 
the Athenians as a crime punishable with death. Soc- 
rates was born at Athens about 469 B. C. He learned in 
his youth the art of his father, a sculptor, but devoted 
himself afterward to philosophy. He fought creditably 
in several campaigns of the Peloponesian war, and on 
his return, secured against want by a small fortune, he 
devoted his riper years to the public service — to the 
study and instruction of youth and men in search of 

(31) 



32 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

knowledge. His stern morality and fearless love of 
truth gave offense to the corrupt party that controlled 
the state; he was accused of contempt of the gods, and 
of misleading the youth of the city, condemned to death, 
and drank the cup of hemlock in the year 400 B. C. 

Interesting as his philosophical S3^stem is, we must 
pass it by, in order to devote our time to that which 
concerns us more particularly — his method. Suffice it 
to state that, starting with a firm conviction that one 
all-wise, all-loving God reveals himself in the reason 
and conscience of man, and that the soul of man is im- 
mortal, the great aim of his philosophy is self-knowl- 
edge; that he refers all knowledge to this — to human 
life ; that he eschews all belief in authority, and accepts 
as knowledge only what is proved; that he looks upon 
self-knowledge as the only source of true insight, and 
upon this as the only source of true virtue and happi- 
ness. To lead men to a love of knowledge, of truth, to 
assist them in their search after self-knowledge, was for 
him the noblest occupation, the one by which he could 
confer the greatest benefit upon his community : to him 
teaching was a divine calling. 

His method was conversational and, at least so far as 
the subject in dispute was concerned, developing. He 
did not start with definitions and theorems, in order to 
deduce from them, and to classify with their aid the 
concrete phenomena of the world and of human life; 
but he led inductively from concrete facts and examples 
to ideas and convictions of higher orders. He did not 
present to the learner finished systems, but he placed 
himself upon the stand-point of the learner, induced 
him to express his ideas accurately; if the latter were 



GREECE. 33 

correct, he confirmed them by new illustrations and 
developments; if they were incorrect, he showed their 
absurdity by first admitting them, and then leading the 
learner to the legitimate consequences of the erroneous 
idea. This he accomplished by skillful questioning, 
throwing the burden of thought upon the learner, who 
was delighted to find himself apparently assisting the 
beloved and respected teacher in the search for truth, 
and who gathered new strength from every new error 
which he discovered in his reasonings, aided by the 
incomparable socratic irony. 

Ideas should not, according to him, be implanted 
from without, but logically developed from within; 
they should grow, as it were, in the self-active mind 
of the learner, until they are sufficiently clear to be 
expressed, sufficiently advanced to be horn. Hence he 
loved to compare his art with that of the obstetrician, 
in which his mother had been an adept; and he con- 
sidered aptness to teach immeasurably more important 
in the teacher than mere positive or material knowl- 
edge, which may be accumulated in the weakest brain. 

Of himself he said : " Properly speaking, I have never 
been any body's teacher ; but if any one desired to hear 
what I said, I have never begrudged him, nor asked how 
old he was. Also, I do not instruct onl}^ for money, but 
I am equally ready to converse with rich and poor, and 
whoever wishes it, may answer and hear what I have to 
say .... But if any one maintains that he has learned 
or heard something from me, especially what all of you 
have not heard, you may know that he does not speak 
the truth." By this, undoubtedl}^, he would imply that 
what his pupils knew they had learned by their own 



34 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

self-active efforts, and that he had only aided them in 
becoming conscious of their ideas. 

Unlike Pythagoras, he had not a closed school, but 
conversed freely with all who wanted to listen to him 
or to answer him, at all times and in all places. A few 
young men, who seemed suitable to 'him by personal 
appearance, age, and ability, he attached to himself as 
special pupils, that attended him more regularly, and 
whom he instructed and improved by wise words and 
blameless example. 

Although he was not a teacher of children, his method 
is, nevertheless, the true one even for elementary train- 
ing ; for inasmuch as it insists upon the arousing of self- 
activity on the part of the learner, and proceeds induc- 
tively, it contains the germs of the developing method, 
which is gradually and surely, with the slowness and 
irrepressibility of truth, working its way into our 
schools. 

The teaching and life of Socrates had made a deep 
impression upon his pupils ; but, as might be expected, 
few of them succeeded in comprehending the master in 
his vast universality. The majority of them took a 
one-sided view of him ; had become dazzled, as it were, 
by one flash of his brilliant genius, and had been com- 
paratively blinded to the rest. At the same time, the 
method of Socrates tended to strengthen their individu- 
ality, and to transform their zeal into enthusiasm, so 
that a number of them became the founders of one-sided 
schools of philosophy. Thus Antisthenes founded the 
cynical school, which sought virtue and happiness in 
the absence of wants, and which Diogenes reduced to 
absurdity by a sort of practical socratic irony. On the 



GREECE. 35 

other hand, iVristippus and his followers, the Cyrenians, 
held that pleasure was the only good and pain the only 
evil, and that, therefore, pleasure was the highest object 
of pursuit. Again, Euclid and Stilpo established the 
Megarian school, which attached undue importance to 
dialectics, the art of debating, and which was lost ulti- 
mately in formalism. 

Fortunately, however, there was among the pupils of 
Socrates one genius who comprehended him in all his 
fullness and universality; who had the power, as one 
of his critics remarks, of collecting in a focus the 
scattered rays of truth proceeding from the master, 
and of forming them into a system of philosophy. 
This genius is Plato. 

Plato was born 429 years B. C, at Athens, from a good 
family ; indeed, Codrus and Solon are named among his 
ancestors. He was educated with great care. He took 
great delight in painting and poetr}^^ until he became 
acquainted with Socrates in his twentieth year, when 
he began to devote himself exclusively to the study of 
philosophy. After the death of Socrates, he visited the 
school of Euclid, at Megara; went subsequently to 
Cyrene and to Egypt, and ultimately to lower Italy and 
Sicily, in order to become familiar with the Pythagorean 
school. In his fortieth year he returned to Athens, 
where he passed the rest of his days, with a few short 
interruptions, in the academy, in the circle of devoted 
pupils. He died 348 B. C, in the eighty-first year of 
his life. 

Plato has never exercised any influence upon educa- 
tional practice, but he was the first to make the theory 
of education the subject of strictly scientific inquiry; 



36 HISTOKY OF PEDAGOGY. 

and this is, for us, his great merit. Inasmuch as he 
was still a Greek, and, by birth and the Doric influence 
of Magna Grsecia, an aristocrat, his educational system 
has many faults, which our time, nearer to pure hu- 
manity than his, can only deprecate. 

Thus he, too, merged the individual and even the 
family in the state, and looked upon education as the 
exclusive concern, the privilege and duty of the state. 
He considered the objects and the power of the state 
binding for every individual, and denied to parents all 
control over their children. He favored, in his Republic, 
a sort of caste in which the philosophers, as rulers of the 
state, occupied the first rank, and were supported by the 
guardians of the state, or warriors. The comforts of life 
were to be supplied by the artisans and farmers, and by 
the slaves, who were denied the benefits of an education. 
Women were important to him only as the mothers of 
future generations, and were in every other respect 
considered as inferior beings. 

On the other hand, he shows that education is the 
noblest and most important of all callings. He insists 
upon harmonious culture, keeping the physical and 
intellectual development in proper balance : because an 
organism in which the intellect prevails over the body 
is exposed to dangerous, nay, fatal morbid irregulari- 
ties ; and an organism in which great physical strength 
is combined with a weak mind, is sure to perish from 
the worst of all diseases, ignorance. He bestows the 
greatest care upon moral training, and would banish 
from the productions of plastic art and of poetry every 
thing that might mislead reason or corrupt morality. 

His practical directions are built consistently upon this 



GREECE. 37 

basis. They have the great merit of forming the first 
complete, harmonious sj^stem— -a machinery whose gear- 
ing is perfect. But since they never exerted any direct 
influence upon practical education, and since all their 
features that bear upon the history of the developing 
method have been mentioned in the second lecture and 
in the review of Socrates, I make haste to pass to the 
next and greater hero of Greek education, the great 
Stagirite, Aristotle, whose universality and comprehen- 
siveness, whose advanced liberality and humanity, 
whose mental vigor and energy have earned him the 
surname " Alexander of the intellectual world." 

Aristotle was born 384 B. C, at Stagira, in Macedon. 
In his seventeenth year he became a pupil of Plato at 
Athens, and remained with him for twenty years. His 
industry, zeal, and success were so great that Plato is 
said to have called him the "philosopher of truth," and 
'• the soul of his school." At a later period the two great 
men became, however, estranged, probably on account 
of the differences in their modes and fields of thought. 
Plato was the philosopher of the ideal; Aristotle, of the 
real: Plato started with general ideas, and ignored 
nature; Aristotle held fast to nature, investigated its 
laws, keeping aloof from all arbitrary hypotheses and 
speculations : Plato had been well-nigh absorbed by the 
Pythagorean method of deducing particulars from gen- 
erals ; Aristotle had returned to the method of Socrates, 
and aimed to proceed from particulars to generals. What 
wonder if the two natures became estranged? 

In his mature age Aristotle became the teacher of 
Alexander the Great, but returned afterward to Athens, 
where he devoted himself to study, to writing, and to 



38 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

higher instruction in the Lyceum. After a stay of 
thirteen years, he was accused of impiety by a promi- 
nent Athenian, who alleged that, in a poem to his 
murdered friend Hermias, he Avorshiped the latter as a 
god. He fled on this account to Chalcis, on the island 
of Euboea, where he died 322 B. C., in the sixty-second 
year of his age. 

His numerous writings show that he was master of 
all the realms of knowledge of his time to an extraor- 
dinary^ exteat, and that lie increased the scope of all. 
Indeed, his Avritings became the principal and, in many 
respects, the exclusive source of the higher culture of 
antiquity and of the middle ages. Proceeding analytic- 
ally on the secure foundation of experience, of reality, 
he almost created natural science and logic, and estab- 
lished ethics, political economy, and anthropology on a 
scientific basis. His pedagogy is based on knowledge 
of human nature ; it forms, even to-day, a fair criterion 
of education; for he is much more liberal, much more 
humane, much less Greek, much nearer to ,the broad, 
cosmopolitan views of our days, than his predecessors 
and cotemporaries. 

He still looks upon the state as the highest exponent 
of human life; but he recognizes, too, the dignity of the 
family, and even of the individual, whose happiness is 
the only legitimate object of the state. He still con- 
siders it the duty of the state to secure the education 
of the young in the aggregate ; but in all details he asks 
for free development, untrammeled by petrified legisla- 
tion ; and he pronounces positively against the omnipo- 
tence of the state in educational affairs. He still ac- 
knowledges slaverv and the inferiority of women ; but 



GREECE. 39 

he educates the former and grants the latter equality, 
at least in the family. 

He claims that the character of man depends on 
nature, habit, and instruction. Habit and instruction 
constitute education. They should always be together, 
but so that habit precedes. Habit is to prepare the 
mind for the ethical instruction. Only where there 
are good habits, principles can have an ennobling in- 
fluence. But, in all cases, education must aim with 
nature at rational and harmonious perfection of all the 
powers of the child. The physical life of the child 
must be developed with care, and subjected to a 
rational discipline ; the intellectual powers must be 
trained in all directions; but the highest aim of edu- 
cation is found in the ethical refinement of the young 
human being, in guiding him to justice, truthfulness, 
charity, self-control, firmness of character, etc. Again, 
in all educational efforts, the individuality of the j^upil 
is to be taken into account, as the most imjwrtant 
factor in the final result. 

The opposition of Aristotle's views to those of Plato 
extends also to the curriculum of study. Plato attaches 
great importance to mathematics, because it leads from 
the concrete to the abstract, from the real to the ideal; 
Aristotle assigns a subordinate place to it, because it 
has no bearing upon the ethical nature of man. Plato 
opposes poets and artists, whom Aristotle commends. 
In opposition to Plato, Aristotle insists upon the study 
of history as an important branch of instruction, and 
deprecates mythical lore, for which Plato has great 
respect. Plato sought religion in the ceremonies; 
Aristotle found it in the heart of man. 



40' HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

The sketch of this great man — it would be unjust 
to call him merely a great Greek — would lack a very 
important element of completeness, were I to ignore a 
few directions which he gives for pedagogic practice — 
for method of teaching. At the head of these stands 
the principle that, in all instruction, in every inves- 
tigation, we must start from known truths, known 
concepts or facts within our personal experience. Does 
this not remind us of Pestalozzi? Again, he teaches 
that learning is naturally agreeable, and he enables 
his pupils to find 'pleasure in it by arousing their 
own activity — their self-activity, as Froebel would say. 
He condemns violent physical exercises, athletic sport 
for the young; in music (singing), he would keep 
within the scope of the voice ; grammatical instruction 
he bases ui:)on reading. Perhaps many a school man 
of our days could learn pedagogic wisdom from Aris- 
totle ; perhaps many a school of our days would make 
great strides toward the developing method of educa- 
tion, would make stronger individualities, better and 
happier men and women, if it were to adopt the 
Aristotelian principles of teaching. 

Socrates began the study of the Greeks as human 
beings — indeed, to him, who had traveled so little, 
they were the human race — and found a confused 
mass of scattered truths. These, Plato arranged and 
united in a beautiful, harmonious system. But it was 
a specifically Greek system ; it would monopolize truth 
for Greece ; it would make the Greeks a superior race, 
better and happier, it is true, than the barbarians, but 
better and happier at their expense; it would cut the 
isthmus of Corinth, and make the Peloponesus the abode 



GREECE. 41 

of a sort of human gods or of god-like human beings ; 
a kind of temple which the barbarians could approach 
only as worshipers, and enter as slaves. Then there 
came, in time, from beyond the isthmus, the great 
Stagirite who defeated the selfish project, and con- 
quered the great wisdom of the little community for 
the world. 

Aristotle is the connecting link between Greek civ- 
ilization and the European civilization of later periods; 
through him and because of him, Greek civilization 
expanded into European civilization, and into the cos- 
mopolitan civilization of our days — the civilization 
that asks not after nationality, or birth, or station, or 
sex, but that would unite all human beings in one 
great brother- and sisterhood of strong individuals, 
whose equal duty is virtue, whose equal privilege is 
happiness. 



H. P.-4. 



LECTURE IV. 

ROME : NUMA POMPILIUS — GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS — 

ADVENT OF GREEK CULTURE — CICERO — 

SENECA — QUINTILIAN. 

The educational history of the Romans is not so 
brilliant as that of the Greeks. Still they occupy an 
important place in the history of pedagogy, inasmuch 
as they preserved, to some extent, the Grecian achieve- 
ments; inasmuch as they developed the utilitarian 
side of education; but more especially because they did 
much by their institutions, although unintentionally, 
for the emancipation of the female portion of mankind, 
because they began, in this respect, the work which 
our own country is destined to complete. 

In the mythical history of Rome, Numa Pompilius 
occupies a position similar to the one of Lycurgus in 
the history of Sparta. Like Lycurgus, Numa Pompilius 
is looked upon, in the traditions of his people, as the 
founder of the state and of national ethics. He made 
religion the soul and guardian of civilization. The 
property and life of the citizens were in the protection 
of the gods ; heavenly powers guarded all relations of 
(42) 



ROME. 43 

life — matrimony, the family, society, commerce, agri- 
culture, i:)olitics. Such a system was not without its 
dangers; for in regulating the worship of the various 
deities, and in establishing and incorporating a number 
of separate priesthoods, he introduced the system of 
state religion, which still exercises its baneful influ- 
ence on European civilization, even in England. But 
the sound common sense of the Romans never allowed 
priesthood the exercise of a decisive influence upon 
education, nor its exclusive management. 

Numa's predecessor, Romulus, had founded and es- 
tablished the state, and secured it against the hostili- 
ties of neighbors. Numa would make peaceable citizens 
of the warlike inhabitants of the city; he would, for 
this purpose, strengthen and ennoble the ties of domes- 
tic, social, and political life, and, at the same time, 
procure a firm foundation for prosperity and morality 
by enhancing the interests of agriculture and of the 
trades. His position and his personal virtues, as well 
as the comparative small ness of the young state, favored 
his eflbrts. 

All the various ranks and trades, instituted by him, 
rest on one common ethical basis, of which patriotism 
is the main center. However, all invidious distinctions 
of rank yielded, in the course of time, before the con- 
sistent opposition of the plebeians against the privileges 
of the patricians, and made room for civil equality of 
all citizens. Still, slavery was maintained by Rome 
always, and even extended, in such a way as to render 
it the darkest stain in her much-praised humanity, 
which, indeed, never reached in Rome the high standard 
that Numa's institutions might lead us to expect. The 



44 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

long struggle for existence in the beginning, and, after- 
ward, the ambitious strife for the supremacy of the 
world, led the people more and more astray from the 
peaceable paths and humane aims of Numa. 

The life of the Romans, and hence, too, their educa- 
tion, was decidedly practical, utilitarian in its nature; 
it was guided by considerations of necessity, utility, 
and expediency. The ideality of the Athenians, the 
unbroken serenity of life, the harmonious culture of 
man for its own sake, the universal development of 
beauty found no home in the Roman mind. The 
Romans had no liberal gymnastics, nor a purely in- 
tellectual culture; physical and mental development 
were not in themselves aims, but only means to make 
a living, to become fit for civil and military service. 
Sober reason decided whether a thing was useful or 
not; and only what appeared useful was carried on 
within the narrow limits of usefulness. Agriculture, 
the mechanic arts, military service, and swimming 
offered sufficient opportunities for physical exercise. 
Art was esteemed only on account of its beauty; it 
labored for the wants of daily life, of the state, of 
public worship; but its aesthetic independence, its 
freedom in the realms of fancy, was not recognized. 
Sciences, too, were carried on as far as they were 
practical: jurisprudence and Roman history, because 
they served to regulate civil and political life; agri- 
culture, because it taught how to increase the yield 
of the soil. The candidates for public service studied 
rhetoric, because it was essential to success. 

The ethics of the old Romans was distinguished by 
purity and high virtue. Roman youths were trained 



ROME. 45 

very early in obedience and loyalty, in frugality and 
self-control, in energy and perseverance, in fidelity and 
justice. But the Romans, like all other nations of 
antiquity, had never risen to a recognition of human 
rights and human duties; their virtues were confined 
to their intercourse with fellow-citizens; and Roman 
patriotism superseded the laws of humanity; they were 
always Romans, right or wrong ; they were Romans 
first, Romans last, Romans forever. Hence their whole 
history is characterized by harshness, and even cruelty 
and violence; by an insatiable passion for conquest; 
by a constant pursuit of material advantages; by an 
endless chase after the external blessings of life. But, 
while Numa had based the acquisition of these upon 
honest labor, the Romans of later periods — not unlike 
the gentlemen of our time — sought a maximum of 
gain with a minimum of labor. At the same time, 
an inordinate desire for enjoyments of the grossest 
kind, the most shameless profligacy, took the place of 
the Roman frugality of earlier periods. Religion de- 
generated into mere routine service with the people, 
into a trade with the priests, into a political engine 
with the statesmen. In short, Numa's spirit gradually 
fled from all spheres of Roman life. 

About the middle of the third century B. C, Greek 
culture was introduced in Rome, and the wealthy 
Romans made rapid strides in science and art. But 
it was Greek science and art, and the Greeks were 
already a degenerate people. With foreign culture 
they imported, too, foreign vices; and they were 
equally ready and apt in acquiring the latter, thus 
accelerating the political and moral decline of the 



46 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

proud commonwealth, and verifying the prophecy of 
the stern Cato, who wrote to his son about the close 
of the second century B. C. : " Believe me, as if a 
prophet had said it, that the Greeks are a worthless 
and incorrigible race. If this people diffuse its litera- 
ture among us, it will corrupt every thing." 

In the educational practice of ancient Rome, the 
family occupied the highest place. The father was 
unlimited master of the family; in his hands rested 
even the life and death of the children ; a power which 
was, however, mitigated by the great consideration 
accorded to the mother of the family — the matron. 
For a number of years the care of the children was 
the almost exclusive province of the Roman mother. 
She attended not only to their physical wants, but 
formed their language, their ideas, their moral senti- 
ments and principles, their religious feelings. She 
was, to a great extent, what Pestalozzi would have 
the modern mother become. In the course of time, 
slavery extended its pernicious influence even upon 
the Roman mothers; they, too, were affected by the 
general corruption of Roman ethics, and the system 
of nurses became so universal that only the poorest 
mothers nursed their children themselves. 

Next to the mother, the father occupied the most 
important place in Roman family education. By his 
greater authority he sustained the pedagogic labors of 
the mother. While she was principally concerned with 
the physical and ethical training of the children, and 
with the practical instruction of the daughters, the 
father busied himself with the intellectual culture, 
more particularly, of the boys, whom he made familiar 



ROME. 47 

with the gods of the family and of the state, Avith the 
history and constitution of the commonwealth, with 
civil and social institutions; and whom he prepared 
for some profession or trade. Of course, this instruction 
was neither systematic nor based upon books, but ap- 
pealed exclusively to the experience, the poAvers of ob- 
servation, the common sense and memory of the boy. 

When the arts of reading and writing — which, in 
the beginning, only very few children had learned 
from their fathers — became more necessary, a sort of 
public school was established and attended even by 
girls; and when Greek culture came to conquer the 
state that had conquered Greece, a host of teachers 
taught Greek and Latin grammar, rhetoric, literature, 
philosophy, music, and other sciences and arts. Still, 
education never became a concern of the state, but was 
left entirely to private and corporate enterprise ; so that 
the children of the poor learned little or nothing, for 
want of time and money. On the other hand, the 
wealthier houses attached to the persons of their chil- 
dren quite a retinue of pedagogues, who were selected 
from the slaves of the household, or hired from the 
ranks of educated persons that had failed in other 
callings, or lacked energy to engage in other pursuits. 

Among the Roman writers on education before the 
Christian era, Terentius Varro occupied, undoubtedly, a 
high rank ; but his productions, although quite numer- 
ous, have been lost, or are preserved in so fragmentary 
a condition that it is impossible to obtain a clear in- 
sight into his views. It is a significant fact that he 
attached much importance to early education, as exer- 
cising the greatest influence upon life ; and that he 



48 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

advocates a mild discipline, since harshness neutralizes 
instruction, and since the latter can thrive only if the 
learner finds his task a pleasant one. 

The rhetorical and philosophical works of the great 
Cicero, the father of modern classical prose, contain a 
number of ideas on education, with special reference to 
the training of the orator. He looks upon education as 
the process by which the natural talents of man are 
perfected, and upon virtue as its ultimate aim. He 
would have the teacher mild, strict, and just. Punish- 
ment, in word or deed, must never degrade, and must 
never be administered in anger. He attaches great 
importance to religion, as a means of moral training. 
He would have education begin with earliest childhood, 
particularly by attending to the surroundings, and 
guarding the susceptible infant against improper influ- 
ences; but,' in subsequent training, he places undue 
weight upon the cultivation of memory, and leans 
strongly to the cramming method of teaching. 

Among the Roman writers on educational suhjects, 
in the Christian era, Seneca and Quintilian occupy the 
highest rank, although their pedagogic wisdom, too, 
lies scattered in a mass of ideas on other subjects, and 
never rises to the dignity of an educational system. 
Seneca was born two years B. C, at Cordova, in Spain, 
and educated in Rome. In the course of time he be- 
came the teacher of young Nero, and withdrew after- 
ward into i^rivate life, devoting himself to literary 
occupations. A. D. 65, he was accused of participation 
in a conspiracy and condemned to death. 

Surrounded by the excesses of a corrupt society, he 
held that man was naturally inclined to evil, but that 



ROME. 49 

wise laws and, particularly, a rational education, coup- 
ling strictness with mildness, could counteract the 
sinful tendencies and lead to virtue. He admonishes 
impressively against anger in punishment, and sums 
up his directions in this respect in the sentence: 
" Who condemns quickly, condemns passionately ; who 
punishes too much, punishes unjustly." He recognizes 
the manifold differences in the individual character, in 
the dispositions and peculiarities of children, and in- 
sists upon the necessity of modifying the treatment of 
children in accordance with these differences. Dis- 
gusted with the sterile cramming of the memory that 
characterized his time, he contended for reduction and 
limitation of studies to that which was needed in life, 
and gave rise to the rule that •' we must teach not for 
the school, but for life." 

In moral education, he places great weight upon ex- 
ample and illustration as the mightiest factors; these 
may precede or follow precept, according to circum- 
stances, but they are essential. '' Long and tedious," he 
says, " is the road of precept, but short and efficacious 
that of example." He differs widely from Cicero in 
the place which he assigns to the study of nature. He 
holds that only insight into the laws of nature enables 
us to approach the Deity, as it were, and to regulate 
our lives in accordance with his will; for wisdom, he 
says, consists in strict adherence to the known laws of 
nature, in following her example freely and from con- 
viction. Physical exercise he deems useful, if carried 
on with moderation; but injurious, exhausting body 
and mind, if indulged in to excess. He, too, acknowl- 
edges the importance of early training, and extols the 

H. P.-5. 



50 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

calling of the teacher Avho leads youth in the path of 
truth. 

Quintilian was born A. D. 42, in Spain. He, too, re- 
ceived his education in Rome, where he became one of 
the most eminent orators. He became a public teacher 
of eloquence, and was so successful that he obtained from 
the emperor Vespasian the consular dignity and a con- 
siderable salary. He was the first teacher salaried by 
the state, and was distinguished by the title, Professor 
of Eloquence. After the death of his wife and of one of 
his two sons, he retired into private life, in order to 
devote himself to the education of his remaining son, 
and wrote in his retirement his leading work, the 
Institutions of Oratory^ which also contains his principles 
of general education. 

Quintilian has a very favorable opinion of the powers 
of children. He thinks that weak-minded children and 
children that can not learn are very rare; that, on the 
contrary, man has natural talents, a natural disposition 
to learn as the bird has to fly ; and that a good educa- 
tion always yields good fruit. He holds that intellectual 
culture should begin long before the seventh year; not 
that the children should be forced to systematic, per- 
sistent work, but that their plays should be managed 
so as to develop their intellects. Hence, in the choice 
of the nurses, great care should be taken to choose 
well-educated women, with correct pronunciation and 
of excellent moral character. Similar care should be 
bestowed on the choice of associates and, again, of the 
first teachers or pedagogues. Of these he does not ask 
that they should be learned; but he insists that they 
should be able to direct the first instruction in Ian- 



ROME. 51 

guage; and, above all things, if they are not learned, 
that they should be aware of it. He is quite positive 
that it is a grave error to think that an inferior teacher 
is good enough for the beginning, because the children 
will subsequently have the double task of unlearning 
what the inferior teacher taught them, and of acquiring 
new things. But even the most skillful teacher, he 
thinks, is a curse, if he is not a noble, pure man. 

He considers it the first and foremost duty of the 
teacher to render himself familiar with the individual 
peculiarities of the pupil. He condemns the practice 
of asking more from a pupil than he can do under- 
standingly. In discipline he favors mildness, and is 
altogether opposed to corporal punishment, upon which 
he looks as a sign of negligence and indolence in the 
teacher. In addition, the teacher should be on a friendly 
footing with the parents of the pupil; should consider 
himself, for the time, the substitute of the father; 
should be free from faults, control his anger, be mod- 
erate in praise and blame, always just, and an example 
of all that is good. He warmly prefers school instruc- 
tion to instruction in the family, because the latter does 
not fit for the vicissitudes of life in society; because it 
produces self-conceit and fails to produce self-control. 

Thus, while we fail to discover in the Roman writers 
a harmonious system of education, similar to those of 
their Greek teachers; while we fail to find in them the 
lofty ideals of a Socrates and of an Aristotle, they fur- 
nish us a rich mine of practical suggestions, so strictly 
in accordance with common sense and with correct prin- 
ciples of humanity, that to follow them is to be in the 
path of truth. 



LECTURE V. 

CHRISTIANITY — THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY — BACON — 
COMENIUS. 

During the reign of Emi3eror Augustus, about four 
years before the beginning of the Christian era, there 
was born in Galilee a man who by many of his follow- 
ers is not inappropriately named The Man. While 
Roman civilization, which at that time overshadowed 
the world, was hastening to its death, he founded a new 
religion, and with it a new civilization, based on pure 
humanity; a religion and a civilization which will ever 
rise superior to the persecutions of its enemies, and to 
the abuses and perversions of its pretended friends; a 
religion and a civilization which, deeply and fii'mly 
rooted in truth, must henceforth live and grow, even 
if it should lose its name. 

Christianity, opposed to all external distinctions 
among men — not excluding the distinction of sex — 
recognized in man only the human being, a being en- 
dowed with unlimited perfectibility; and would lead 
its followers to the love of God and of fellow-beings, to 
individual and social virtue. ''Be perfect, even as your 
(52) 



CHRISTIANITY. 53 

Father in heaven is perfect," is the watchword of this 
new civilization : i. e., be all that your powers enable 
you to be ; live, grow, do ; avoid stagnation as you would 
death ; seek progress as you would life. In the propor-^ 
tion in which the human being perfects himself, makes 
all the use he can of his talents — no matter how limited 
they are — Christianity approves or disapproves, rewards 
or punishes; the greatest is not he who has most, but 
he who does most. 

Thus, Christianity addressed itself to all who suffered 
from oppression, whatever its nature; it offered to all. 
that were " heavy-laden " a haven of " rest," where there 
is no superiority of nation, of caste, of rank, of birth, of 
wealth, of knowledge, or of sex; where even the helpless 
infant is safe from cruelty and violence. On this ac- 
count it spread with amazing rapidity as soon as the 
oppressed masses had realized the nature of the call, 
braving persecution and death, compelling, at last, even 
its enemies to acknowledge the truth and force of its 
teachings, and creating mighty revolutions in all rela- 
tions of life. 

But this rapid diffusion was not without its evil 
results : few apprehended the new religion in its full- 
ness and beauty; many adopted it from policy, and 
perverted its teachings to personal advantages; many 
were drowned in its vast ideality, and sought virtue in 
entire abnegation, in absolute contempt of real life; 
ignorance, selfishness, and fanaticism robbed it more 
and more of its purely humane character; and Christian 
education, whose aim had been the humanizing of man- 
kind, retrograded into a-specific education, whose highest 
aim was the production of believers in Christianity, or. 



54 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

rather, of believers in a variety of dogmas that grew 
upon the new religion as the mistletoe grows upon the 
oak. 

To review the multitude of phases through which the 
specific Christian education passed, variously influenced 
by monasticism, scholasticism, and a number of other 
factors, would lead me too far astray from the ultimate 
object of my lectures. The study of the period during 
which the seeds of truth in the religion of humanity 
lived and even grew, in spite of all kinds of hostile 
agencies, is indeed very gratifying to the philanthropist 
and to the Christian ; but it is our business to hasten 
to the time when philosophy and science succeeded in 
coming to the rescue, and to sketch the lives and works 
of a few eminent men whose labors culminated in the 
new developing education; and this brings us to the 
close of the sixteenth century and, first, to Lord Bacon. 

Lord Bacon was born in the year 1561, in London, 
and died in 1626. His eloquence and learning had 
enabled him to climb to the highest positions of public 
trust; yet his official career has little to please, much 
to mortify, since it appears that his moral character 
was quite reprehensible. On the other hand, he has 
conferred incalculable blessings on mankind by freeing 
it from the fetters of scholastic word-wisdom, from the 
slavery of tradition and authority ; by recalling it from 
the sterile plains of an excessive idealism on which it 
had starved, and leading it back to the rich fields of 
nature; by showing mankind the road to the philosophy 
and science of humanity, the great safeguards of the 
religion of humanity. 

Lord Bacon was no teacher, nor did he directly exert 



BACON. 55 

any influence upon education ; but he gave to mankind 
new ways and new aims of thought, which, in the 
course of time, modified the whole intellectual and 
ethical life of the race. He rejected the scholastic, 
abstract method of antiquity, and insisted upon inde- 
pendent investigation of concrete reality ; he wanted 
science to become intuitional, living, and practical; it 
must investigate the world, in order to control it and 
make it subservient to our wants and happiness. 

He holds that scientific life does not consist in the 
learning of traditional lore, but in independent investi- 
gation, in discovery and invention. Hence he finds 
the only correct method of study in experience, in ob- 
servation and experiment, with the accompanying com- 
parisons, applications, and generalizations. The student 
must rise from carefully observed and digested facts to 
accurate conceptions, from the phenomenon to the law 
of being and to the rule of action. Hence Lord Bacon's 
method has been called the method of induction — not 
the induction of mere analysis, taught by Aristotle, but 
the induction of synthesis, of discovery and invention. 
In order to do full justice to this method of thought, it 
is necessary to give up all prejudices, or "idols," as 
Lord Bacon calls them, whether they arise from insuffi- 
cient powers of insight, from haste, from personal tem- 
perament, from education and caste, from manners, 
customs, and laws of the communit}^, or from a belief 
in the authority of tradition; perception and reason 
must be perfectly free and untrammeled. 

I hope to show in the sequel the vast influence of 
this new philosophy upon education, more particularly 
upon intellectual culture ; an influence which, in the 



56 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

words of Von Raiimer, at the distance of more than two 
centuries, is still in the ascendant. But there are in 
his works many passages that have a direct bearing on 
education, of which I offer a few by way of illustrating 
his views on the subject. He gives preference to the 
genetic method of teaching, where the teacher "trans- 
plants knowledge into the scholar's mind as it grew in 
his own ; " for " whatever is imparted in this way will 
take root, flourish, and bear fruit." However, he be- 
lieves that "methods should vary according to the 
subject taught, for in knowledge itself there is great 
diversity." 

In another place he pleads for the importance of edu- 
cation. " A gardener," he says, " takes more pains with 
the young than with the full-grown plant; and men 
commonly find it needful, in any undertaking, to begin 
well. We give scarce a thought to our teachers, and 
care little for what they may be, and yet we are forever 
complaining because rulers are rigid in the matter of 
laws and penalties, but indifferent to the right training 
of the young." 

The beneficial influence of Lord Bacon's philosophy 
upon pedagogy is illustrated most conspicuously and 
most beautifully in the last bishop of the Bohemian 
Brothers, John Amos Comenius. He was born in the 
year 1592, at Comnia, in Moravia. His early history is 
obscure; it is known, however, that he attended the 
university of Herborn, at Nassau, where he studied 
theology. In 1614, he returned to his native land and 
became rector of a school, and, in 1618, pastor of a parish 
of Bohemian Brothers. In 1624, Ferdinand II. banished 
all evangelical preachers from his realms, and Comenius 



COMENIUS. 57 

took refuge at Lissa, in Poland, where he became, in 
1628, member of the faculty of the academy. Here he 
completed his first didactic Avorks of importance, among 
which the ^^ Key to the Study of Languages^^ founded 
his reputation. It appeared in 1631, and was received 
with such immense applause that in a short time it was 
translated into twelve European and several Asiatic 
languages. In 1641, he accepted a call of the English 
Parliament to visit England, and to reform the English 
schools according to his principles; but civil Avar neu- 
tralized his efforts, and he yielded to a similar call from 
Sweden, in 1642, where he was more successful. Soon 
afterward he returned to Lissa, where he was made a 
bishop of his church in 1648. In 1650, he accepted the 
call of a Hungarian prince, to assist in the reorganiza- 
tion of schools, but returned to Lissa four years later. 
In 1652, the Poles burned Lissa and scattered the Bohe- 
mian Brothers forever. His subsequent wanderings 
brought him to Amsterdam, where he was cordially 
received. He died at Naarden, a neighboring town, in 
1671. During his stay in Hungary he had composed a 
remarkable school-book, entitled the ^^ Orbis Pidus,^^ which 
I shall have occasion to mention again hereafter. 

Comenius was by no means one of those pedagogues 
who take up one or another single subject of instruction, 
or Avho place all good in a certain method of teaching. 
He was, in the very best sense of the word, universal; 
and notwithstanding this universality, he always strove 
after the most thorough foundation. The aim of educa- 
tion he finds in wisdom, in knowledge, virtue, and piety. 
He contended that all men need instruction; that all 
children, rich and poor, high and low, boys and girls, 



68 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

should be taught in school. " Not," he adds, " that each 
should learn every science; but all should be so in- 
structed that they may understand the basis, relation, 
and purpose of all the most important things, having 
reference to what they are and are to become." He 
complained that the educational systems of his time 
did not accomplish this. In many places there were 
no schools at all, and in others only the children of the 
wealthy were cared for. At the same time, he condemns 
the methods of instruction as repulsive, tedious, and 
misty; and deplores the neglect of moral training, the 
absence of sciences in the curriculum, and the undue 
preponderance of Latin. 

He proposed a system of educational institutions, 
consisting of four divisions: tlie maternal school, the 
vernacular school, the Latin school, and the academy. 

The maternal school comprises domestic education 
under the mother's direction, and lasts during the first 
six years of the child's life. Its main care is the sound 
mind in the sound body. The mother must attend with 
intelligent solicitude to the physical welfare of her child; 
she must nurse it herself; guard it from all stimulants 
and quackery; offer it opportunities for cheerful play, 
for manifold observations, accompanied with simple in- 
structions ; and implant the seeds of virtue and piety. 

He shows ingeniously how, already during the first 
six years of life, the child can and should obtain in the 
parental home the elements of all later knowledge. 
He shows how from the cradle it gradually extends the 
scope of its perceptions to the sitting-room, the other 
rooms of the house, the 3'ard, the streets, the gardens 
and fields, to sun, moon, and stars; how it becomes 



COMENIUS. 59 

familiar with its limbs and their uses, with animals, 
plants, stones, and their names; how it learns to dis- 
tinguish light from darkness, day from night, colors, 
shapes, numbers, and sounds; how it gains ideas of 
longer and shorter periods of time, of the development 
of organic life, of human institutions ; how it becomes 
skilled in song, language, and gestures. In short, Co- 
menius sketches an elementary course of object lessons, 
of exercises in intuition, in thinking and speaking, and 
shows that it contains the principles of all subsequent 
instruction in geography, natural science, geometry, 
arithmetic, music, language, etc. At the same time, 
parents should, particularly by example, develop correct 
moral feelings, and lead their children to moderation, 
cleanliness, obedience, and modesty. 

When the child is ready for the vernacular school, 
the latter should present itself in a friendly, not in a 
repulsive light. The vernacular school, similar to our 
district school, furnishes instruction to the child from 
the sixth to the twelfth year. Comenius asks that it 
should teach only the vernacular language (hence its 
name), and that it should lay great stress upon prac- 
tical education. Reading, writing, orthography, arith- 
metic, measuring, song, religion, the elements of histor}^, 
natural science, geography and astronomy, popular in- 
struction about trades and arts, should constitute the 
curriculum of exercise and study. Thus, he would make 
the vernacular school an institution that prepares for 
life as well as for the higher institutions of learning. 

With reference to the latter, I would merely state that 
Comenius lays down for them, among others, these prin- 
ciples : without knowledge, rational thought, speech, 



60 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

and action are impossible, hence the sciences must be 
nurtured; avoid words without ideas; let the concrete 
always precede the abstract. To deal more largely with 
these higher institutions does not lie within our limits, 
and I return to his views on elementary instruction. 

School, he says, is a workshop of humanity; it is to 
bring man to the ready and proper use of his reason, 
his language, and his artistic skill — to wisdom, elo- 
quence, and prudence. Hence, its material of instruc- 
tion must be valuable and comprehensible for all the 
children of the people, and must tend to their universal 
cultivation. Whatever bears no fruit in life nor en- 
hances humanity, whatever tends to empty words and 
shallow mechanical drilling, is not for the school. The 
material of instruction must be selected with care, and 
treated in accordance w4th natural methods that agree 
with the normal development of children and take into 
consideration their manifold individual peculiarities. 
First, the senses are to be set to work ; then, memory ; 
and, at last, understanding and judgment. The pupil 
must not learn by heart Avhat has not become his from 
perception or reflection ; lie must not speak about what 
he does not understand. The thing must precede the 
word; the example must come before the rule^ In all 
branches, the easy and the simple thing must come 
before the difficult and the complex. Nor should the 
child receive much or many things at once, but progress 
gradually and continuously. 

Thus, the clear mind of Comenius was already fully 
aware of the methodical laws Avhich require ^that all 
instruction should 1oe based on intuition, should be 
gradual, thorough, and continuous; but it was no less 



COMENIUS. 61 

evident to him that all instruction must arouse and 
enhance the self-activity of the learner. The child, he 
claims, must use its senses as perceptive powers; must 
observe surrounding objects; compare its perceptions; 
form concepts, judgments, conclusions from its ideas; 
learn to express its thoughts clearly and fluently ; and 
fix its knowledge, as well as improve its skill, by varied 
practice. In short, all the powers of the pupil must be 
kept in activity. Knowledge must not be given to the 
pupil as something finished, as something ready-made 
or cut-and-dried, but it must be found from its elements ; 
or, as Comenius expresses himself, "the teacher must 
not sow plants instead of seeds." 

Wheresoever circumstances permit it, Comenius would 
lead the pupils to obtain their fundamental ideas, at 
least, from the direct observation of objects, or, in the 
absence of these, from the pictures of objects. In order 
to supply such pictures, and in order to fix and arrange 
the ideas gained by the child, he composed a book, 
"The Orhis Pldus, the Visible World; that is, the 
Pictures and Names of all the Principal Things in the 
World, and of all the Principal Occupations of Man." 
In spite of its many faults in technical execution and 
arrangement, this remarkable book exerted a wonderful 
influence upon the schools, and did much to diffuse 
more rational view^s upon education. 

While Comenius thus gave clear directions concerning 
methods of instruction, he never lost sight of the dis- 
ciplinary and pedagogic side of the school. He insists 
repeatedly that the school is not only to impart knowl- 
edge and skill, but that it must, at the same time, 
diffuse virtue and piety, and develop as well as 



62 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

strengthen perseverance, punctuality, orderliness, just- 
ice, etc. He asks for airy and light school-rooms, and 
considers play-grounds essential to a well-regulated 
school. At the same time, he deems frequent walks 
with the classes absolutel}^ necessary, to render the 
children familiar with nature and human occupations. 
In short, Comenius aims not at intellectual culture 
alone, but at a harmonious development of the entire 
human being. He is a pedagogue in the fullest sense 
of the word. 



LECTURE VI. 



LOCKE — FRANCKE. 



I TURN again to England for the representative of 
the next great forward step in science and philosophy, 
and, consequently, in the theory and practice of educa- 
tion. This benefactor of the race is John Locke. He 
Avas born in the year 1632, received his education at 
Westminster and Oxford, and died in the year 1704, 
after a life remarkable for strange vicissitudes, but 
yet more for unsullied purity and intense piety. 

Bacon had led the way to inductive investigation 
with reference to external nature ; Locke applied the 
same principles to the study of the internal — of the 
mental nature of man — and laid down the results of his 
labors in his " Essay on Human Understanding.''^ Thus 
he became the founder of empirical psychology, so im- 
portant in modern pedagogy. More particularly, he 
established the important doctrine that there are no 
innate principles in the mind, and that all ideas come 
from sensation or reflection, from external or internal 
experience or observation. 

His ideas on the subject of education are laid down 
in a book, entitled " Thoughts on Education,''^ of whose 

m) 



64 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

contents I give a short abstract. He defines liis ideal 
of education, at the outset, in tlie following words : " A 
sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full de- 
scription of a happy state in this world. He that has 
these two, has little more to wish for; and he that 
wants either of them, will be little the better for 
any thing else." He then gives, in the first place, a 
comprehensive treatise on the hj-gienic treatment of 
children. He asks that the food be plain and simple, 
and free from excessive or high seasoning; that the 
clothing should be light and comfortable. In this con- 
nection, I can not refrain from giving you in full his 
concluding remark on lacing. He saj^s : " And yet I 
have seen so many instances of children receiving great 
harm from strait lacing, that I can not but conclude 
there are other creatures as well as monkey's, who, 
little wiser than they, destroy their j^oung ones by 
senseless fondness and too much embracing." Again, 
he insists upon frequent and prolonged stay in the 
open air, upon diligent bathing and swimming, upon 
thorough hardening of the body, upon regular sleep on 
a cool and hard bed, and upon a limited use of physic. 
" It is safer," he saj^s, " to leave the children wholly to 
nature than to put them in the hands of one forward to 
tamper, or that thinks children are to be cured, in 
ordinary distempers, by any thing but diet, or by a 
method very little distant from it." 

It is by no means the smallest merit of Locke to have 
presented the hygienic treatment of children in a more 
thorough, more systematic, and more scientific manner 
than any of his predecessors had done. He inaugurated 
tliereby a reform which did good work, as we shall see 



LOCKE. 65 

directly, in the schools of the pietists and, more yet, in 
those of the philanthropinists of Germany, and which 
is bearing delightful fruit even to-day. 

Locke's ideas on discipline are almost equally excel- 
lent. "As the strength of the body," he says, "lies 
chiefly in being able to endure hardships, so also does 
that of the mind. And the great principle and founda- 
tion of all virtue and worth is placed in this, that a 
man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross his 
own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs 
as best, though the appetite lean the other way." He 
holds that this training in self-denial and self-control 
can not begin too early, and that a sturdy fight must 
be made from earliest childhood with all kinds of ill 
habits and ill humors, however slight they may seem. 
He places great stress upon the development of truth- 
fulness and of a proper sense of honor; although it 
Avould seem to me that he errs in making ambition 
and the love of applause one of the most important 
incentives of the mind. 

He looks upon the rod — which he calls the instru- 
ment of the "usual lazy and short-way chastisement" — 
as the most unfit means of any to be used in educa- 
tion ; because it accustoms the child to act less from 
reason than from fear of pain, and because it abases 
and breaks the spirit. Only in extreme cases of malice, 
stubbornness, and lying, he is willing to admit the rod 
as a corrective; though it seems difiicult to see how an 
instrument so pernicious can work any good, even in 
these cases, unless we are willing to grant that malice, 
stubbornness, and lying can be cured by that which 
produces these disorders. 

H. P.-(J. 



66 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

Unlike Quintilian of old, he is in favor of private, 
domestic education in preference to the public school; 
a view for which he deserves credit, when we consider 
the miserable condition of the public schools of his 
time in methods of instruction and discipline, as well 
as in materials of instruction; and if we oppose to 
them, as Locke does, an excellent mother and an ex- 
cellent governor. In all cases, however, he is opposed 
to a multiplicity of rules. "Make but few laws," he 
says; "but see that they be well observed when once 
made." 

Speaking of learning, he begins : " You will wonder, 
perhaps, that I put learning last, especially if I tell 
you that I think it the least part," He deems learn- 
ing indeed necessary, but not the chief business of 
education; inferior to health, virtue, and wisdom. He 
deems learning a great help to virtue and wisdom in 
well-disposed minds; but in others not so disposed, he 
contends that "it helps them only to be the more 
foolish and worse men." He would have children learn 
without compulsion, of their own free will and accord; 
and he considers it the main business of the educator 
to render learning easy and pleasant. 

He advises to teach children reading as soon as they 
can speak, but without compulsion ; in play, as it were, 
by means of alphabet blocks, for instance. As reading 
books, he commends ^Esop's Fables^ with as many pic- 
tures as possible, also Reynard, the Fox. Writing is 
commenced as soon as the children can read, by methods 
that deserve little notice. Afterward, drawing is taken 
up, and great attention is paid to it on account of its 
practical value. Language he would have taught on 



LOCKE. 67 

the plan of Comenius, i. e., based on practice, and in 
connection with scientific instruction. Arithmetic, 
book-keeping, and practical scientific branches are 
considered of special importance ; on the other hand, 
poetry, music, and the arts in general, find little favor 
in his eyes. Only dancing is admitted, because it gives 
graceful manners; and, for "gentlemen," fencing and 
riding are added. 

Indeed, Locke's " Thoughts on Education'' have through- 
out special reference to the training of young noblemen, 
since his position, as tutor in a noble family, gave rise 
to the treatise. While they, therefore, contain many 
valuable thoughts, they do not contain any thing about 
the arrangement of public institutions, education of 
girls, etc., and have no claim as a system of universal 
education. 

To this, without doubt, it is due that the direct and 
immediate influence of Locke's views upon education 
was not remarkable. Formalism and scholasticism 
continued to rule the schools where they existed. It 
was reserved for the pietists, the followers of a re- 
formatory religious direction in Germany, to give 
practical life to his views, inasmuch as he asked for 
greater attention to physical education; inasmuch as 
he deemed moral and intellectual development supe- 
rior to mere learning; and inasmuch as he called for 
branches of instruction that have a bearing upon real 
life. To this the pietists added an intensely Christian 
tendency and, above all things, an earnest effort to 
confer the blessings of education equally upon all, 
the rich and the poor, the high and the low, the boys 
and the girls. 



b« HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

Similar to the Puritans of England at an earlier, 
and to the Methodists at a later date, the pietists 
made war upon the dogmatism of an established church 
and upon the aristocratic isolation of the schools, and 
struggled for active and general diffusion of practical 
Christianity and for the popularizing of education. 
The founder of pietism was Phil. Jacob Sj^ener, who 
occupied high clerical positions at Dresden and Berlin 
from 1686 to 1705. 

The pedagogic representative of pietism is Augustus 
Plermann Francke, a man whose labors in the cause of 
education are so intimatel}^ interwoven with his life, 
that to sketch the one is to sketch the other. Francke 
was born at Lubeck, in 1663; in 1666, his father re- 
moved to Gotha, but died four years later. The orphan 
boy attended the gymnasium of Gotha with such re- 
markable success that he was declared ready to graduate 
in his fourteenth year. However, he did not go to the 
university until two years later. He studied theology 
diligently and successively at Erfurt, Kiel, Hamburg, 
and Leipzig, where he took his degree. 

The important event that finally determined the ten- 
dency of his life overtook him at Hamburg, where he 
established an infant school in 1687. "Upon the estab- 
lishment of this school," he says, "I learned how de- 
structive the usual school management is, and how 
exceedingly difficult the discipline of children; and this 
reflection made me desire that God would make me 
worthy to do something for the improvement of schools 
and instruction." He published the results of his ex- 
perience in a work, entitled " The Education of Children 
to Piety and Christian Wisdom.^^ 



FRANCKE. 69 

In 1691, the university of Halle was founded, and, 
through Spener's influence, Francke was appointed 
professor of Greek and Oriental languages in the new 
university, and, at the same time, pastor of the suburb 
Glaucha. 

The opening of the year 1694 is to be considered as 
the beginning of all the great institutions of Francke. 
They commenced as follows : the poor were accustomed 
to come to the parsonage every Thursday for alms. 
Instead of giving them bread before the door, Francke 
called them into the house, catechized the younger in 
the hearing of the elder, and closed with a prayer. In 
his own poverty, he began to lay by money for the 
poor by depriving himself for a long time of his 
supper. In 1695, he fixed a poor-box in his room; in 
this he found, one day, seven florins, left by a benevo- 
lent lady. " This is a handsome capital," he said, on 
taking it out; "I must found a good institution with 
this; I shall found a school for the poor." On the same 
day, he bought some books and emplo3^ed a poor student 
to teach the children two hours daily. Soon the chil- 
dren of some citizens began to attend, and paid a small 
tuition fee, so that the teacher was better paid and was 
enabled to teach five hours daily. 

During the first summer the attendance had reached 
sixty. At the same time, the reputation of his benevo- 
lence and piety procured him contributions from every 
quarter, so that he was encouraged to rent a room in a 
neighboring house, to employ an additional teacher, 
and to separate the poor school from the citizen (or 
burgher) school. 

In 1695, he formed the plan of establishing an orphan 



70 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

asylum. Immediately he took a number of orphans to 
his school, and boarded them at the houses of benevolent 
citizens ; but a present of five hundred thalers from a 
friend en-abled him soon afterward to buy a house and 
to establish an orpban asylum. In the same year, three 
boys, the sons of noble families, were intrusted to him, 
to be educated under his care, giving rise to the founda- 
tion of the present pedagogium, which was reserved for 
the sons of the nobility. 

In 1696, he bought a second house for his orphans; 
and, in June of that year, the number of orphans had 
increased to fifty-two, so that he concluded to build a 
more extensive asylum, the corner-stone of which was 
laid two years later. In the same year, he established 
a free table for poor students. In 1697, he founded, in 
addition to the vernacular school, a Latin school, which 
differed from the gymnasia of his time in paying more 
attention to scientific branches. In 1707, he established 
a sort of teachers' seminary, in which he gave to stu- 
dents free instruction and opportunit}^ for practice, as 
well as free board, for two years, on condition that, after 
the completion of their course, they would teach or be 
otherwise useful in his institutions for three years. 
And thus he went on, founding institution upon insti- 
tution, adding building to building, until his death in 
the year 1727. 

This is the report, made to the king, of the status of 
his creations at the time of his death : 1. The peda- 
gogium, 82 pupils, with 70 teachers and attendants; 
2. The Latin school, with 3 inspectors, 32 teachers, 
400 pupils and attendants; 3. The vernacular schools, 
with 4 inspectors, 98 male and 8 female teachers, and 



FRANCKE. 71 

1,725 boys and girls; 4. Orphan asylum, with 100 boys, 
34 girls, and 10 attendants; 5. Free boarders, 225 stu- 
dents and 360 poor scholars ; 6. Household, apothecary's 
store, and book store, 53 attendants; 7. Institutions for 
females — ^15 in the college for young ladies, 6 in the 
widows' asylum. 

In 1863, these institutions, having continued to flour- 
ish under state control after the death of Francke, 
represented in real-estate the value of 313,266 thalers; 
since their foundation, more than 10,000 teachers had 
instructed in them, and they had given an education 
to nearly 250,000 boys and girls. 

From all this it is evident that Francke was truly 
and seriously in earnest in his efforts in behalf of schools 
and education. In practical achievements, in organ- 
izing and administrative talent, he surpasses all peda- 
gogues and educationists that have preceded or followed 
him. His whole learning, his whole energy, his whole 
life, his whole happiness were in the cause; and his 
success, when we take into consideration the period he 
blessed with his labors, is truly astounding. 

He was one of the first who saw clearly how much 
the teacher needed professional training, and he was 
singularly successful in securing it for his teachers. 
He laid great stress upon systematic order and method 
in instruction and discipline — too much, it is true, for 
his immediate followers, who lacked his genius, and in 
whose hands they degenerated into mechanism of the 
worst sort. The study and consideration of individual 
propensities and powers was one of his main concerns, 
and it frequently happened that his pupils were in as 
many different classes as they followed studies. He is 



72 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

concerned for the physical well-being of his pupils, and 
insists upon airy and high school-rooms and sleeping- 
rooms, as well as upon wholesome diet and exercise. 
He is in favor of intuitional teaching, and provides an 
abundance of apparatus and other appliances in accord- 
ance with his views. In discipline he is full of love 
and kindness, yet inflexibly strict. 

He defines his aim of education as " godliness and 
prudence." The first expression is equivalent with 
piety, as it was in the mind of the founder of his sect — 
the sum and substance of Christian virtues — and in his 
mind, again, the sum and substance of human virtues. 
With Locke, he regarded this of incalculably more im- 
portance than mere learning. "One grain of living 
faith," he exclaims, in his unbounded enthusiasm, 
" is more to be valued than a hundred-weight of mere 
historical knowledge ; and one drop of true love is more 
valuable than an ocean of learning in all the mys- 
teries." Unfortunately, in this, too, his followers caught 
only the words and failed to be inspired with the spirit, 
so that they came very near converting into a curse to 
humanity the very things with which he meant to 
bless and did bless mankind. 

By the word " prudence " he designated the practical 
side of education. This was particularly manifest in 
the great attention which he paid to scientific and 
technical instruction. There were not only extensive 
botanical gardens, cabinets of natural history, dissect- 
ing-rooms, and hiboratories connected with his insti- 
tutions, but turning-lathes, mills for grinding glass, 
painters' tools, and other opportunities for practice in 
technical skill. 



FRANCKE. 73 

Thus, he became virtually the founder of the scientific 
schools of Germany — the Real schulen — which have con- 
tributed so much to the development of technical talent 
and scientific progress in Germany, as well as to the 
subjugation of natural forces and to the consequent 
emancipation of the race. Thus, he outlived even the 
perversions to which his immediate followers had sub- 
jected his work, and fully realized his motto: "They 
who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; 
they shall mount up with wings as eagles." 



H, K~7. 



LECTURE VIL 



ROUSSEAU. 



In the last two lectures I sketched a few types of the 
philosophers and schoolmen of the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries, engaged in developing aims that cul- 
minated in the schools of the humanists and realists. 
Both aimed at the development of individuality and 
of a sense and appreciation of humanity ; both educated 
for life upon this earth, human or real life, in opposition 
to the excessively religious tendency of the orthodox 
schools of the time, which looked upon life on earth as 
a transitional state whose only value lay in preparation 
for a future existence. They differed, however, in their 
means: the humanists laid almost exclusive stress upon 
the Latin and the Greek languages, rhetoric, poetry, and 
classical antiquities — or upon the so-called "humani- 
ties"; while the realists found their arcana in the 
"knowledge which is most worth" — in mathematics, 
physics, history, geography, and the modern languages. 

In the eighteenth century, Rousseau, the greatest of 
realists, opened the way for entirely new aims in educa- 
tion by what has been called "a return to nature." 
(74) 



ROUSSEAU. . 75 

This expression must not, however, be understood to 
mean that the celebrated French philosopher returned 
to a natural system that had previously been followed. 
While the human being, previous to the humanists and 
realists, had been looked upon as a more or less preter- 
natural existence — a being not fully subject to the or- 
dinary laws of organic growth and development — and 
the human mind, at best, as something to be filled, 
Rousseau wanted man to be looked upon as an organism, 
and asked that education should be an independent de- 
velopment of the nature of this organism. In order to 
accomplish this, he required an absolute return to what 
he called the natural state of man; that is, the young 
must be educated independent of civil relations, current 
prejudices, dogmatic authority, etc. ; and the aim of the 
educator must be to produce an absolutely independent 
human being — fitted, however, to become a member of 
society — with powers strengthened by individual effort, 
with convictions and a will dependent only on reason, 
and free from the passions and prejudices of men. 

Individuality, independence, strength of character, 
nature, reason, are the watchwords of Rousseau's educa- 
tional system ; but it had to be greatly modified, freed 
from a host of fallacies, vaguenesses, eccentricities, and 
morbid sentimentalities ; a great number of insufficien- 
cies had to be supplied; the nature of man had to be 
more carefully and more fully set forth, before it could 
bring good to mankind. Still, in spite of its faults, it 
contains the germs of our present developing education, 
and Rousseau is justly termed its father. 

Rousseau was not a practical educator; he was ex- 
clusively a theorist : he did very little; he only thought: 



76 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

hence his impractical eccentricities. Hence, too, his life 
is of little importance to us ; for in it we find nothing 
to imitate and, as far as educational practice is con- 
cerned, nothing to shun. He was born in the year 
1712, at Geneva, in Switzerland. At the same time his 
mother died — his first misfortune, as he justly terms it. 
His father, a watch-maker, was a man without charac- 
ter, and had little influence upon his education. After 
a life full of strange vicissitudes and strangely stained 
with shameful errors, but full, too, of the noblest aspira- 
tions and of the purest and most generous philanthropy, 
he died at Ermenonville, near Paris, in 1778, and found 
a resting-place in the Pantheon in the year 1794. 

His ideas on the subject of education are laid down 
in the celebrated work entitled " Emile, or Education,^'' 
which appeared in 1762. It consists of five books, of 
which the first treats of the management of new-born 
children, and more particularly of Emile up to the time 
when he learned to talk, or to his second year of life. 
The second book brings him to his twelfth year; the 
third book, to his fifteenth ; the fourth, to his marriage 
with Sophia, whose education forms the burden of the 
fifth book. Thus, he divides education, first, into boys' 
and girls' education, but devotes much more attention 
to the former than to the latter. 

In general, Rousseau starts with an utter horror of 
the civilization of his time ; and would, therefore, keep 
the boy entirely aloof from this civilization, guard him 
against all its influences, return him to what he calls 
the state of nature, and leave him to his normal talents, 
wants, and inclinations. "All is good," he exclaims, 
" as it comes from the hands of the Creator : all degen- 



ROUSSEAU. 77 

erates under the hands of man." Hence he calls his 
system, in which he claims to follow the plans of the 
Creator, nature's course of development. Education, he 
says, is threefold: man is educated by nature, by other 
men, by things. The inner development of our powers 
and organs is the education of nature; the use we are 
taught to make of this development, is the education 
by men ; and what we learn by direct experience, from 
surrounding circumstances, is education by things. The 
first of these we have not in our power; hence, the re- 
maining two must be shaped in accordance with it, if we 
would have harmonious culture. His Emile, who is to 
be thus naturally and harmoniously educated, is rich, 
healthy, vigorous, an orphan, and inhabits a temperate 
climate — circumstances which, indeed, are not necessa- 
ril}^ natural or co-existent, but which enable Rousseau 
to place Emile in the hands of an excellent tutor, and 
to bring to bear upon him educational influences, free 
from all kinds of prejudices, preconceived notions, and 
conventional ties. 

Of this tutor Rousseau asks that he educate Emile for 
a man — a human being — for the common human voca- 
tion, and not for any special calling, not even for citizen- 
ship. His highest guiding principle must be, in what- 
ever he does, to educate according to nature, i. e., in 
accordance with the nature of the boy, with his talents, 
powers, wants, individual peculiarities — in accordance 
with the rights and the welfare of the child. In no case 
must the tutor allow himself to be guided by arbitrary 
laws, fashionable follies, or thoughtless, servile obedience 
to temporary customs, notions, and tendencies. " Nature," 
he says, " creates neither princes, nor nobles, nor states- 



78 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

men. If you educate the pupil exclusively for a certain 
position, you make him unfit for every other. Whether 
my pupil is destined for war, for the church, or for the 
bench, is of little concern to me. To live, life, is the 
calling which he is to learn from me. When I shall be 
done with him, he will be neither statesman, nor soldier, 
nor priest; he will be a human being — a man. Natural 
education must fit man for all human relations." Again, 
speaking of the importance of studying the child's na- 
ture, he exclaims : " They do not know the nature of the 
child; inconsequence of the false notions that lead them, 
they go further astray the further they progress. Even 
the most reasonable are guided by what is suitable for 
men of science, without considering what the children 
can comprehend. The}^ always seek the man in the boy, 
without reflecting what he is before he is a man. Begin, 
therefore, with the study of your pupils." If Rousseau 
had done nothing else than to enounce and establish 
these anthropological principles of education, he would ^ 
have done enough to entitle himself to the gratitude of 
succeeding generations. 

On the basis of these principles he builds his system 
of education. In this, physical education occupies a 
prominent place. His rules coincide mostly with those 
of Locke, whose " TJwughts on Education " he knew and 
esteemed very highly. He holds that physical is inti- 
mately connected with moral education; and he looks 
upon bodily weakness and infirmity as a source of moral 
indisposition and as a great danger to character, while 
health and vigor give mental serenity and impart 
strength to the will. 

He maintains that there is no original depravity in 



ROUSSEAU. 79 

the human heart ; that there is not a single vice in the 
heart which has not come from without. Hence, early 
education should be mostly negative; it should consist 
in keeping the heart free from vice and the understand- 
ing free from error. He would satisfy the natural wants 
of the child readily, yet within strict limits of necessity 
and wholesomeness. He is opposed to every sort of un- 
natural restraint and tyranny, as well as to all premature 
moralizing; on the other hand, he would guard with 
equal zeal against every thing that tends to enervation, 
against all superfluous assistance, against the pamper- 
ing of whimsical appetites, against whatever might mis- 
lead the child into hypocrisy, cunning, or falsehood in 
word or deed. 

The child must learn to adapt itself to circumstances; 
must learn to submit to physical necessity ; must be led 
gradually to correct ideas, sentiments, inclinations, and 
actions by actual relations of life. Its own experience 
must teach it how to distinguish the useful from the in- 
jurious ; must make it jDrudent, a lover of the good. 

About the fifteenth year of his life, Emile is intro- 
duced to society, where he may become attached to 
others, learn to respect and love his equals. Heretofore 
he has felt, striven, acted for himself in rural seclusion ; 
now it is time that he should learn to feel, strive, and 
act for others — should fit himself for society. Eousseau 
contends that he does this under unusually favorable 
circumstances; that envy, hatred, jealousy, and malice 
have found no room in his heart, because he had no 
opportunity to compare himself with any one else; 
because no one had stood in his way, and the vices of 
society could exercise no influence over him. He has 



80 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

strengthened and exercised his eyes in order to see cor- 
rectly; his heart, in order to feel correctly. He is con- 
trolled b}^ no authority but that of reason. He is ready 
to distinguish, in social life, appearance from reality, 
evil from good; he is ready to appreciate the degen- 
erating influence of civilization, to esteem human 
worth, to pity the degenerate race, to help and serve 
his neighbor, to love his native land, to aid public 
welfare; in short, to become a humane and moral, a 
useful and happy member of society. 

For intellectual culture, Rousseau demands clearly 
and decisively all the principles which, through and 
since Pestalozzi, have become the guiding-stars of edu- 
cation : training of the senses ; self-activity ; organic 
development; continuity; evolution of the powers; 
lively interest. He makes war upon mechanical train- 
ing, cramming, over-work, superficiality, and precocity; 
and condemns words without thoughts, as well as sym- 
bols without things. Even with reference to the teach- 
ing of various branches of instruction, he is fully up to, 
nay, in advance of our time. 

He asks that geography should begin with the house 
and place of abode, and points with bitter humor to a 
manual whose first question was, " What is the world ? " 
and to an answer once given, " A ball of pasteboard." 
Home geography should be the starting-point ; the pupil 
should draw maps of the neighborhood, in order to learn 
how maps are made and what they show. 

Instruction in physics he would begin with the sim- 
plest experiments, illustrating the most common and 
obvious phenomena; and he would have teacher and 
pupil construct the instruments used. Yet he would 



ROUSSEAU. 81 

have the experiments form a chain, by the aid of 
which tliey may be better retained in the memory; 
for facts and demonstrations entirely isolated do not 
remain there. 

He would not introduce, before the age of fifteen, any 
branches of speculative knowledge, or any that refer to 
social relations, or are based upon reflection, such as 
knowledge of men, history, politics, morals, religion, 
etc. ; because, before this age, there are no independent 
starting-points in the child's mind; because, before 
this time, the pupil is not ready, not ripe for these 
branches. 

Even reading and writing should not be undertaken 
with Emile before his twelfth year, since, up to this age, 
his time is entirely taken up with the study of the book 
of nature, with the collection of experiences and ideas, 
through the medium of his own senses, at the hand 
of his tutor. And when he can read, his first and, up 
to his fifteenth year, his only reading book is Defoe's 
Robinson Crusoe. "From books," he says, "men learn 
to talk about what they do not understand; but there 
is one book which may be considered as a most valuable 
treatise upon natural education ; a book which might, 
for a long time, constitute the entire library of the 
pupil, namely, Robinson Crusoe. Robinson, alone upon 
an island, obliged to make every thing necessary to 
himself, becomes the boy's ideal; he will ask only for 
what would be necessary for him upon a Robinson's 
island." 

On the other hand, he would have the tutor visit 
workshops with his pupil, so that the latter may learn 
to esteem and appreciate rightly the dignity and value 



82 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

of human labor; and he would have Emile himself 
learn some respectable trade — for instance, that of a 
carpenter — in order to cure him of the then current 
prejudices against trades. " For," he exclaims prophet- 
ically (the book was written 1757), " we are approaching 
a crisis — the century of revolutions. It is impossible 

that the great monarchies of Europe can last long 

Happy will he be, then, who shall understand how to 
leave the condition which has left him, and to remain 
a man in spite of fate." 

Esthetic culture received as little favor in the eyes 
of Rousseau as it had received in those of his predecessor 
Locke; a position which is fully explained by his real- 
istic tendency, by his indignation at the degeneracy of 
the arts, and by his excessive fear of precocity and 
pseudo-culture. He is poetically eloquent against elo- 
quence and poetry, and demands clearness, simplicity, 
even coldness. Fables are wholl}^ condemned by him ; 
he contends that they are suitable only for men; that 
children must receive nothing but the "unadorned, 
naked truth." 

Religious culture receives a great share of his atten- 
tion. Yet, in accordance with his views on intellectual 
culture, it must be postponed, as far as religious ideas 
are concerned, to a late period. In his fifteenth year, 
Emile did not yet know that he had a soul, and Rousseau 
fears that he might find it out too soon in his eighteenth. 
For the period of education and, in this case, not before 
the fifteenth year, only natural religion is considered 
suitable. He would develop belief in God and immor- 
tality of the soul by means of contemplations of nature, 
of man, of virtue, of conscience, of fate, etc. He speaks 



ROUSSEAU. 83 

with the greatest enthusiasm of Christianity and opposes 
materialism. 

Also, in the fifth book, discussing the education of 
Sophie, he treats religious culture with great considera- 
tion. But he asks that religion should never be made a 
matter of compulsion or sorrow, never a task or dut}^; 
and that the girls should more love than learn religion. 
Prayers should be said in their presence, but they should 
not be forced to learn these by heart. They should be 
accustomed to feel themselves constantly in the presence 
of God, and should devote their lives to a worship con- 
sisting in doing good. Their religion should be of the 
heart, not of the head. 

Among the many faults and inconsistencies of Rous- 
seau's system, whose chief features I have attempted to 
sketch, the most glaring are the entire absence of family 
training, the relatively inferior position assigned to the 
female sex, the almost exclusive reliance upon direct 
experience and negative education, and the excessive 
withholding of positive instruction in mental culture, 
the unreasonable and morbid hatred of society, and the 
extreme postponement of social education. 

Among its many virtues, I would gratefully point out 
the enunciation of correct principles of intellectual cul- 
ture, based upon the laws of organic development ; and, 
above all, the establishment of the anthropological prin- 
ciples of education : the recognition of individual human 
worth as the highest criterion of excellence, the recogni- 
tion of the fact that social excellence presupposes indi- 
vidual excellence, and the vindication of the rights and 
privileges of children. In the light of these great excel- 
lences, the faults of his system lose their pernicious 



84 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

character to a great extent, and appear as salutary rem- 
edies directed against evils peculiar to the educational 
systems of his time. And his great work on education, 
" Emile,^^ in spite of its one-sidedness, its Platonic ideal- 
ity, its insufficiencies, is still, as Goethe terms it, the 
gospel of natural education, the germ that grew into 
the developing education of our days. 



LECTURE VIII. 

INFLUENCE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHERS: KANT — FICHTE — 

RICHTER — SCHOPENHAUER — HEGEL — ROSENKRANZ — 

HERBART — BENECKE — SPENCER. 

The work of polishing, preparing, and arranging the 
raw material furnished by the impetuous Rousseau, as 
far as the aims of education are concerned, was accom- 
plished by philosophers like Kant, Fichte, Richter, 
Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Rosenkranz. 

Kant maintains that the objects of education are 
threefold: moral, technical, and pragmatical. The moral 
object is the absolute one, and is attained in morality; 
the technical object, in skill; the pragmatical object, 
in prudence. Education must cultivate, civilize, mor- 
alize man. Children are to be educated not for the 
present, but for future generations, ^. e., in accordance 
with the ideal of mankind and of its destiny. Only 
on the basis of this principle, progress — a future better 
condition of mankind — is possible. 

In addition to culture, education comprises sustenance 
(nursing, fostering), discipline, and instruction In 
sustenance, it is needful to follow nature as much as 

(85) 



86 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

possible, to keep children from injury and from a per- 
nicious use of their powers. Discipline is to keep the 
child from losing its humanity by yielding to its ani- 
mal appetites. Instruction must give the child knowl- 
edge and skill ; it attends to physical development, but 
mainly to mental culture. 

In education, it is all-important to establish always 
the true reasons, and to render them intelligible and 
agreeable to the child. The teacher must first make 
his pupil intelligent, then rational, then learned. The 
pupil must not learn thoughts, but he must learn to 
think; he must not be carried, but led, if we would 
make him independent. The lower faculties must be 
cultivated only with reference to the higher; for in- 
stance, memory, only with reference to the service it 
renders to intelligence. Virtue is not inborn, but ac- 
quired by instruction and practice. 

Among the methods of instruction, he prefers, wherever 
it is practicable, the Socratic, heuristic, or developing 
method ; for he says, " nothing is comprehended so fully 
and distinctly, nothing retained so firmly, as that w^iich 
we find ourselves." 

Fichte insists, if possible, still more strongly upon 
morality as the absolute aim of education, and lays 
very great stress upon freedom — independence from ex- 
ternal motives. Only what is done from free determina- 
tion, without the least external motive, is moral; hence 
the absurdity of using hope of rewards and fear of pun- 
ishments as means to lead to virtue. Again, man is not 
alone in this world; he is a man among men, a member 
of a community of rational beings. As such, and only 
as such, he must be considered and educated up to 



FICHTE— RICHTER. 87 

maturity, when he may choose his calling for life. All 
education for special callings or stations in life, before 
that time, he considers absurd and inhuman. 

He contends that early education is, and can be, only 
in the hands of the parents, who, as a last resort in their 
efforts to lead the child to morality, may — nay, must — 
employ force. They should be careful, however, not to 
destroy free obedience, childlike regard for the superior 
goodness and wisdom of parents; and they should ever 
remain mindful of the fact that they are to bring up 
free human beings, and not machines devoid of a will. 
He designates as the representatives of education in 
the community, at a later period, the learned man 
who is to develop intelligence, free insight; the moral 
educator who is to develop that good-will, that charac- 
ter without which intelligence, free insight, has no 
value; and the aesthetic artist who, standing between 
the other two, must bring about a union between 
intelligence and will. 

Richter is the apostle of ideal individuality. " Each 
one of us," he says, "has in himself his ideal prize 
man — that is, the harmonious maximum of all his in- 
dividual predispositions ; and it^ is the business of edu- 
cation to develop him into full growth." At the same 
time, he asks, with Kant, that education should elevate 
above the spirit of the times, and prepare for future 
generations. *' A child," he exclaims, "should be more 
sacred to you than the present, which consists of things 
and adults. Through the child you move, although la- 
boriously, by means of the shorter lever-arm of mankind, 
the longer one." Richter lays great stress on physical 
education; but he advise&moderation, and is particular 



88 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

to let physical exercise follow, not precede, intellectual 
effort. 

Intellectual education, as well as the physical, he 
would begin at birth. Its element of life, as he calls 
it, he finds in cheerfulness. "Cheerfulness," he says, 
"is the sky under which every thing thrives, except 
poison. Cheerfulness is, at the same time, soil, flower, 
and wreath of virtue. What warmth is to the body, 
cheerfulness is to the soul." Hence, he attaches much 
importance to the plaj^s of children. " Beasts," he says, 
" play only with the body ; but children, with the soul." 
Still, here too, he counsels moderation, and warns against 
excess as highly pernicious. For the school, he gives no 
special directions. 

His moral training is, even where he punishes, based 
upon the gentle rule of love. He dislikes precept, and 
relies upon example as the best teacher; for he says, 
" life is kindled only by life ; hence, the highest in the 
child is aroused only by example." Thus, in every di- 
rection, he aims at the independent development of the 
ideal individuality in every child. 

Schopenhauer la3^s great stress upon education for 
real life, upon the proj^uction of accurate understand- 
ing and of sound, untrammeled reason. He contends 
that all knowledge must have an intuitional basis, and 
that all abstract ideas must rest on concrete perceptions. 
He would offer to the young mind nothing that it can 
not master independently, for fear of creating error and 
prejudice. Artificial education, he says, consists in cram- 
ming the head with ideas, by means of teaching and 
reading, long before there are any direct perceptions 
in the mind of the learner. These perceptions are 



HEGEL — ROSENKRANZ. 89 

expected to be supplied afterward by experience; but, 
up to this problematical time, the human being is left 
at the mercy of false impressions and of prejudice. 
This" explains to him the fact that the learned are, as 
a general thing, less liberally gifted with common 
sense than the unlearned. 

Hegel, too, considers pedagogy as the art of making 
man a moral being. For him, the child is, naturall}^, 
neither good nor bad, since it has no knowledge of 
either good or evil. To teach him to do good con- 
sciously and freely, he designates as the object of dis- 
cipline, of moral education. The most important factor 
of moral education he finds in the family, and here the 
mother exerts the greatest influence. Of intellectual 
education, however, the school is the most powerful 
factor. To this he assigns, above all things, the task 
of teaching the art of thinking, and of assisting the 
child in its efforts to obtain fundamental ideas. At 
the same time, he looks upon the school as the transi- 
tion from the family to society. His ideas are, how- 
ever, followed out more systematically by his pupil 
Rosenkranz, to whom I pass. 

Rosenkranz has laid down his ideas on education in 
a work entitled ^^ Pedagogics as a System,^^ of which an 
admirable translation, by Miss Anna C. Brackett, has 
been published lately in Mr. Harris's Journal of Specu- 
lative Philosophy. Education, he holds, can create noth- 
ing ; it can only assist in developing existing actual 
possibilities into realities. Education can attain its 
aim only by setting the pupil to work, by arousing 
his self-activity. The general form of culture is habit ; 
but the free subject (individual) must control the sys- 

H. P.-8. 



90 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

tern of his habits so that their existence will bring him 
to ever greater freedom. The subjective limit of educa- 
tion he finds in the individuality of the pupil ; its ob- 
jective limit, in the means for nursing and developing 
this individuality. The absolute limit of education lies 
in its aim which is the emancipation of the pupil, re- 
sulting in self-education, or, if you choose, in inde- 
pendence. 

Thus, by the labors of these men, and of others whose 
mention I must here forego, the crude material, fur- 
nished by Rousseau, was crystallized into clear, beau- 
tiful, symmetrical purposes, which may be summed up 
in the formula with which we started in the first 
lecture, and which defines education as the development 
of independent individualities, fitted for life in society 
on the basis of morality and reason. 

This formula has been reached by reasoning so cau- 
tious, so honest, so free from prejudice and passion, 
that all cotemporaneous and subsequent developments 
of science, with reference to the nature of man, have 
only served to corroborate it. For the sake of clearness, 
allow me to sketch a few of these developments, and 
to select for this purpose the studies of a few pioneers 
in psychological science. 

Among the principal ones of these and, in time at 
least, among the first, is Herbart, who taught that the 
soul is a simple entity, subject to no change in its 
quality — the real, unchangeable recipient of ideas. 
These, subject to change, assume the forms — among 
which consciousness is one — whose sum is called mind. 
The view that the soul has a number of powers, of a 
higher and lower order, he declares to be a psycholog- 



HERBART — BENECKE. 91 

ical myth. Every single idea manifests itself, in con- 
sequence of its contrasts with others, as a force that 
sets the mass in motion. Thinking, feeling, imagining 
are only specified differences in the self-preservation 
of the soul. Consciousness is only the sum of relations 
in which the soul stands to other entities. Repressed 
ideas that have not entered consciousness are feelings ; 
as they enter consciousness, they become appetites; 
and, united with the hope of success, the appetite 
becomes will. 

Herbart was followed by Benecke, who contends that 
the soul, far from being a simple entity, is composed 
of a multiplicity of similar powers. These he divides 
into elementary (or primordial) and evolved powders; 
the latter resulting from the union of elementary 
powers with impressions and ideas. For him, then, 
the soul is no longer a constant, but a variable, subject 
to development. He deems the existence of an imag- 
ination, of a memory, of an understanding, of a will, 
etc. — as powers independent of ideas — an absurdity ; 
and he shows that they are attributes or results of ideas. 
The simplest psychical formations are the sensuous sen- 
sations, which remain as traces in the soul. These traces 
multiply. The similar ones attract one another, and 
are strengthened into perceptions; similar perceptions, 
by an analogous process, unite to form concepts, conclu- 
sions, judgments, etc. ; clearness of concepts, clearness 
of consciousness, constitutes understanding. The rapid- 
ity and other features of these developments depend, 
subjectively, on the strength (power to retain), vivid- 
ness (tendency to assimilate), and susceptibility of the 
primordial powers; they depend, objectively, on the 



92 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

number and intensity of the impressions, percepts, and 
concepts. Thus, starting from simple premises, he 
teaches that all manifestations of psychical force are 
the necessary results of the subjective peculiarities of 
the primordial powers, and of the multiplicity, inten- 
sity, and clearness of impressions. 

Herbart had shown the absurdity of assuming a 
number of special, independent faculties of the soul ; 
Benecke had proved that the soul is capable of develop- 
ment — a thing that grows ; the next step was taken 
by Herbert Spencer, who shows that this growth is 
organic, subject to the ordinary laws of organic develop- 
ment. Thus, he made psychology strictly a natural 
science, to be henceforth modified, extended in its 
scope, corrected in its errors, limited in its theories, 
by the same laws of criticism that apply to other 
natural sciences. Availing himself of the discovery of 
the laws of evolution, of the correlation, the inde- 
structibility, and mutability of forces, of their insep- 
arability from matter, he has built up a system of 
psychology which, on account of its clearness and 
strict adhesion to scientific principles, is destined to 
supplant, or, rather, to crown the work of his predeces- 
sors, and to become one of the most potent agencies 
in hastening the recognition of correct principles of 
education. 



LECTURE IX. 



PESTALOZZI : BIOGRAPHICAL. 



In order to review the work of practical educators 
during the period sketched in the last lecture, it be- 
comes necessary to turn back to the last quarter of 
the eighteenth century. Here we find the philanthropi- 
nists, among whom Basedow, Campe, and Salzmann 
occupy the highest rank, engaged in attempts to give 
practical shape to Rousseau's views on education. They 
owe their generic name to the Philanthropinum at 
Dessau, an institution founded by Basedow under the 
auspices of Duke Leopold; an institution similar to 
Francke's pedagogium for the education of the sons of 
the nobility, but on purely philanthropic and cosmo- 
politan principles. Campe was great as an author of 
this school of pedagogy; and Salzmann is remarkable 
as the most practical of its followers, his philanthropi- 
num, near Gotha, is the only one that has continued 
its existence to this day. 

In a detailed history of pedagogy, the consideration 
of the labors of these men could not be passed over 
without injury to a full understanding of educational 

(93) 



94 HISTORY OP PEDAGOGY. 

progress; but my limited time and, more yet, my spe- 
cific aim, compel me to content myself with a mere 
mention of them, and to pass at once to a more promi- 
nent figure — to Pestalozzi. 

Pestalozzi was born on the 12th of January, 1746, at 
Zurich, in Switzerland. He lost his father, a physician, 
in 1751, and his education was left in the hands of a 
fond mother and of a faithful female servant, who had 
promised the dying father not to abandon the family. 
These two women were the constant and too watchful 
companions of his childhood. He says of his early ed- 
ucation : " I grew up in the care of the kindest mother, 
who spoiled me with excessive tenderness. From one 
end of the year to the other, I was kept in the house. 
Every essential mean, every impulse to the develop- 
ment of manly vigor, manly experience, manly disposi- 
tion, and manly exercise were wanting, although the 
peculiarities and weaknesses of my individuality needed 
them very much." Perhaps this accounts for the extra- 
ordinary want of practical sense that characterized all 
his undertakings, for his want of caution and circum- 
spection, for his excesssive sentimentality, and for a 
peculiar almost childishness in all his doings and say- 
ings. But it accounts, too, for his great inexhaustible 
love of mankind, for his unshaken faith, for his unlim- 
ited power of self-sacrifice, and for the fact that he 
assigned to the mother the most important position in 
the education of children. 

He received his scholastic education exclusively in 
his native city. Zurich possessed, at that time, in 
addition to the elementary school, a so-called German 
school, in which ordinary school education found its 



PESTALOZZI. 95 

limit; a Latin school, which prepared for the learned 
professions; and a higher school, intermediate between 
the gymnasia and the universities of a later date. 
Pestalozzi visited these schools in their order. The 
first professional study to which he devoted himself 
was that of theology, but he soon abandoned this in 
order to devote himself to jurisprudence. This, too, 
failed to satisfy him, and, in 1767, he left school in 
order to devote himself wholly to agriculture. 

He had read Rousseau's Emile^ which had appeared a 
few years before, and he was affected by the book to a 
remarkable degree. He writes about this : '' As soon as 
this book appeared, my exceedingly impractical dream- 
sense was transformed into enthusiasm by this exceed- 
ingly impractical dream-book. I compared the educa- 
tion which I had had, in the prison of home and school, 
with that which Rousseau sketched for his Emile. The 
home and school education of all the world seemed de- 
formed to me, and I thought I had found the panacea 
for all these evils in Rousseau's Emiky He threw his 
books away, burned his manuscripts, and went to a 
widely-known, successful farmer in the Canton of Bern, 
to study the art of cultivating the soil, as well as the 
sufferings and wants of the country people, who lan- 
guished at that time in a condition bordering on slavery 
and, in many respects, transcending it in abjectness. 

A year afterward, he bought a tract of sterile heath- 
land, near the village of Birr, in the Canton of Argau, 
He had a house built on his farm, and devoted the land 
to the raising of madder. These lands, which he named 
"Neuhof" (the New Farm), he had bought with money 
borrowed on the prospects of a favorable marriage with 



96 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

the daughter of a wealthy Zurich merchant. She became 
his wife at Neuhof, in 1769; but his efforts at farming 
did not prove successful, the creditor withdrew his capi- 
tal, and her fortune was mostly lost. Pestalozzi himself 
ascribes these misfortunes to his absolute practical un- 
fitness, his entire want of skill and capacity. The 
results of his practical efforts, in whatever he under- 
took, were as mean as his plans and aspirations were 
lofty. He himself says that " there was an immense 
contrast between his aims and his achievements, be- 
tween Avhat he wanted to do and what he did and could 
do." 

About this time, he conceived the plan of uniting a 
poor-school or, rather, a home for poor children, with his 
farm. Several cities gave material support to the enter- 
prise, and, in 1775, the new institution was opened with 
fifty children. In summer they were to be occupied 
with agricultural pursuits; in winter, with spinning 
and weaving. In leisure hours they were to receive 
instruction in speaking, reading, writing, etc. The 
wants of the children were to be supplied, in part at 
least, from the products of the children's work. 

The new enterprise was taken up with enthusiasm, 
but it soon began to deteriorate. The children, mostly 
the sons and daughters of beggars, disliked work, and 
made the most unreasonable demands. In these they 
were abetted by their parents, who continued to visit 
the institution for the purpose of extortion and com- 
plaint. Many of the children ran away as soon as they 
had received new clothes. But Pestalozzi wanted to 
persevere; he would rather ''share the last morsel with 
his children " than to give up the institution. He lived 



PESTALOZZI. 97 

"like a beggar, in order to teach beggars how to live 
like human beings." At last, in 1780, however, the 
institution had to be given up, because it lacked all the 
necessaries of life. "I was poor now," says Pestalozzi, 
in utter despondency; ''I fared like all others who 
become poor through their own faults. I lost all con- 
fidence in myself, even in what I actually was and 
could do. My friends, too, loved me only hopelessly. 
All who knew me expressed the opinion that I was 
hopelessly lost." 

But the self-sacrificing fidelity of his wife, Anna 
Schulthess, and the encouraging words of an influ- 
ential friend at Basle, reassured him. During the same 
year, in 1780, he published his first work, entitled 
'' Evening Hours of a Hermit,^^ which contained the 
fundamental thoughts of all his subsequent efforts in 
behalf of education. In this book he attempted to 
show, with the warmth and affection peculiar to his 
womanly nature, that all school education w^hich is not 
built upon the foundation of humane education, must 
mislead; that true education calls for the development 
of all the faculties and capacities in the individual; 
that this purely humane education must precede all 
training for special stations and callings; that it alone 
can lead to an independent, honorable, and happy life; 
that all instruction and all practice must have an in- 
tuitional basis, must be adapted to the child's peculiari- 
ties and surroundings; that, in these things, true self- 
dependent insight must take the place of authoritative 
verbiage, of dogmatic tradition; that a virtuous character, 
coupled with a deep religious sense, is the highest aim 
of all education. "All wisdom," he says, "rests upon 
H. p.— 9. 



98 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

the vigor of a good heart obedient to truth ; and all 
happiness, upon simplicity and innocence. I build all 
liberty upon justice, and justice upon love; and the 
source of all justice and of all earthly blessings, the 
source of love and charity, rests upon the great thought 
that all are children of God." 

The next A^ear, in 1781, he gave to the world 'his 
greatest achievement, a book entitled " Lienhard and 
Gertrude: a Booh for the PeopleJ^ Gertrude, the heroine 
of this romance, is Pestalozzi's ideal. In her manage- 
ment of the household, in her moral influence upon 
her husband — more especially, however, in her educa- 
tion of her children and in her aptness to teach — he 
held her up in this remarkable work as a model to all 
mothers. 

The schools of his time were in a miserable condition ; 
the teachers had little or no education; the nobility and 
wealthier classes demoralized and oppressed the common 
people ; and to correct these errors and faults, these vices 
of society, Pestalozzi wanted to place the education of 
the children of the common people, including their 
instruction, in the hands of the mothers. Thus Pesta- 
lozzi, like Rousseau, aimed at a thorough regeneration 
of the race; but, unlike Rousseau, he left the rising 
generation in its natural soil, and would lead it to 
humanity in the family, under the influence of ideal 
mothers. For Pestalozzi, the child is from the begin- 
ning a social being, growing up in truly natural sur- 
roundings, and under the truly natural guidance of a 
mother who appreciates her responsibilities, and who 
has the necessary tact, skill, knowledge, energy, and 
love to meet them fully. 



PESTALOZZI. 99 

Pestalozzi himself characterizes the aim of the book, 
in the preface to the second edition, as an attempt " to 
effect a better condition of the people on the basis of 
the actual condition of the people and of their natural 
relations." " I saw," he says, " the misery of the people, 
and Lienhard and Gertrude were my sighs over this 
misery. The book was my first word to the heart of 
the poor and forsaken in the land. It was my first 
word to the heart of those who, for the poor and for- 
saken, are in God's stead in the land. It was my first 
word to the mothers of the land, and to the heart that 
God gave them, to be to their children what no human 
being on earth can be in their stead." "For," he says 
in another place, " if the home is not a holy temple of 
God, if the mother does- not cultivat-e the head and heart 
of the child naturally, every other reform of social con- 
ditions is impossible." 

The effect of this work fully justified Pestalozzi's 
expression : " I felt its worth ; but only as a man who, 
in his dreams, feels the value of a good fortune." From 
all sides, from high and low, from philanthropic socie- 
ties, from princes and statesmen, honors, thanks, and 
invitations poured in upon the author of Lienhard and 
'Gertrude. But, through his impractical indecision, all 
came to naught, and he continued to bury himself on 
his dilapidated farm, occasionally throwing out an arti- 
cle, a pamphlet, or a book, until 1798, when he pub- 
lished again a more important work, entitled ^^Investi- 
gations on the Course of Nature in the Development of Man^ 

In this work he summed up, based on Eousseau and 
Fichte, his views upon the aims of education. He 
holds that man is naturally innocent and helpless; 



100 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY, 

his helplessness leads him to insight; this to acquisi- 
tion, possession, and, ultimately, to society. Social rela- 
tions bring about a life of legal right which leads to 
liberty. At the same time, there is in man a natural 
benevolence, which culminates in religion. The work 
is valuable as a casket, containing many bright jewels 
of thought and sentiment, but of little value as a system 
of philosoph}^ or as a basis for pedagogic efforts. 

About the same year (1798), the French devastated the 
Canton of Unterwalden and burned the town of Stanz. 
Fatherless and motherless orphans wandered about the 
country without shelter, food, and clothing. Pestalozzi 
hastened to their rescue. The government placed an 
abandoned convent near Stanz at his disposal. This he 
fitted up for the orphans, of whom he gathered eighty 
between the ages of four and ten. They were all in the 
highest degree neglected, without discipline, ignorant, 
disorderly, in rags and filth — in a state of physical, 
mental, and moral degeneracy. To these outcasts of 
society Pestalozzi would be father, teacher, servant — 
nay, mother. "A seeing man," he himself says, "would 
not have ventured to do this; fortunately, I was blind, 
else I should not have ventured upon it." 

As in Neuhof, he began by uniting instruction with 
work, but he soon recognized the inadequacy of this 
mode of proceeding. For the sake of better progress, 
he made an attempt to employ the older children as 
teachers of the smaller ones ; he also introduced rhythm- 
ical speaking in concert. " I stood in their midst," he 
says, "spoke sounds to them, and caused them to imi- 
tate me ; all who saw it were astonished at the effect. 
I did not know what I was doing, but I knew what I 



PESTALOZZI. 101 

wanted to do, and that was death or attainment of my 
purpose." However, all his efforts were in vain; he 
had undertaken more than one man can accomplish, 
and his institution would have perished of its own 
faults, had not external circumstances caused its earlier 
dissolution. In the summer of 1799, the French estab- 
lished a military hospital in his convent; most of the 
children were dispersed, and the remainder were given 
in charge of a local priest. Pestalozzi himself, after a 
short rest, accepted a position as teacher in an elemen- 
tary school at Burgdorf, in the Canton of Bern, and 
repeated or, rather, continued his experiments in sim- 
plifying elementary instruction, as far as the mechanism 
of the school permitted it. 

However, the limits of the school regulations re- 
strained him too much, and he established in the next 
year, with an assistant, an independent educational 
institution in the same town. Here he published the 
book ^^ How Gertrude Teaches her Children, ^^ which was 
followed, in 1803, by the " Booh for Mothers:' In these 
works he laid down his principles, and attempted to 
show mothers how they can become the elementary 
instructors of their children, thus enabling them to do 
without the school for this purpose. "For," said he, 
"as the child derives its first physical food from the 
mother, so it should also obtain its first mental food 
from the same God-given source." The contents of these 
books will form, however, the principal burden of m}^ 
next lecture, so that we may now proceed with the re- 
maining incidents in Pestalozzi's life. 

In 1805, Pestalozzi established his institute at Yver- 
don, situated at the southern extremity of the lake of 



102 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

Neuenbiirg, in western Switzerland, where he continued 
until 1825. Here Pestalozzi reached the summit of his 
glory. Yverdon became a center of attraction to Avhich 
the noblest philanthropists of the time, from the plainest 
school-master to the greatest statesman, made pilgrim- 
ages, in order to bring away a sacred enthusiasm for 
popular education. From all countries they came — 
from France, from Germany, Italy, Spain, even from 
Russia and North America. Noble-hearted, high-minded 
youths joined him in order to become teachers of little 
children, and to be trained as his assistants. 

In 1809, his institution numbered 15 teachers, 165 
pupils between the ages of six and seventeen, from 
all parts of the world, and 32 adults that studied his 
methods. He writes, about this time: "The difficulties 
that opposed my enterprise in the beginning were very 
great. Public opinion was wholly against me. Thou- 
sands looked upon my work as quackery, and nearly all 
who believed themselves competent judges, declared it 
worthless. Some condemned it as a silly mechanism; 
some looked upon it as mere memorizing, while others 
contended that it neglected the memory for the sake of 
the understanding; some accused me of want of religion, 
and others of revolutionary intentions. But, thank God, 
all these objections have been overcome. The children 
of our institution are full of joy and happiness ; their 
innocence is guarded; their religious feelings are fos- 
tered; their minds are cultivated; their knowledge in- 
creased ; their hearts inspired with love of virtue. The 
whole is pervaded by the great spirit of home-union; a 
pure fatherly and brotherly spirit rules all. The chil- 
dren feel free ; their activity is incited by their occupa- 



PESTALOZZI. 103 

tions; affection and confidence elevate and guide their 
hearts." 

Still there were a number of evils which, perhaps in 
his enthusiasm in consequence of unexpected success, 
he did not see. There were the frequent interruptions 
by the visits of princes and ministers whom the master 
wished to gain for his ideas; there was the want of cul- 
ture on the part of his teachers, who had little chance to 
correct their faults on account of the deficient arrange- 
ments of the household ; there was the want of knowl- 
edge of men, of organizing talent, of pedagogic quickness 
of apprehension, of practical circumspection and me- 
thodic skill on the part of Pestalozzi himself; and, as 
a consequence perhaps, the devil of partisanship that 
invaded the hearts of his teachers, and caused an open 
rebellion shortly after the death of his admirable wife. 

In 1816, a year after the demise of Anna Schulthess, 
twelve of his teachers seceded from the institution. 
Still he lingered on and, in 1818, even succeeded in 
adding to his charge a poor-school in the vicinity of 
Yverdon. This step contributed not a little to a loss 
of original purposes, and to a final dissolution of his 
whole enterprise in 1825. 

" Truly, it seems to me," he writes at this time, " as 
if by this retirement I made an end to life itself; it 
pains me so." He found an asylum at Neuhof, with his 
grandson. Here he wrote his autobiography and his 
^' Sivan's Strams,^^ in which he attempted to express, in 
a concise form, all that he had thought and felt on the 
subject to which he had devoted his life. 

On the 17th of February, 1827, he died. His last 
words were: "I forgive my enemies; may they now 



104 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

find peace, as I enter everlasting peace ! I should have 
liked to live a month longer, in order to finish my 
task ; but I thank God that he calls me away from life 
on earth. And you, my dearest ones, may you live in 
peace, and find your happiness in the quiet life of 
home ! " 



LECTURE X. 

PESTALOZZI : HIS PRINCIPLES AND VIEWS. 

A STRANGE phenomenon, indeed, is this Pestalozzi. 
For thirty years, as he says, in the height of his suc- 
cesses, he had not had time to read a book, so that he 
was more ignorant of the pedagogic achievements of 
his predecessors than the commonest school-master. He 
lacked the talent of organizing, was deficient in prac- 
tical skill, a mere dreamer. By a sort of accident he 
had become acquainted with Rousseau's and, afterward, 
Fichte's views. He was fired by these, and induced 
to undertake an entire reorganization of elementary 
education. 

Himself, he failed in all he undertook ; but he suc- 
ceeded in kindling in others an unprecedented enthu- 
siasm for popular education ; he succeeded in leading 
a host of others to unprecedented success. And this 
he did not accomplish by his own success, not by the 
force of argument or example, but only and alone by 
the force of his great love, which constituted his 
genius. 

He says of himself: " What I am, I am by my heart." 

(105) 



106 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

He was desirous to contribute his share in enhancing 
the welfare of the race, in neutralizing and eradicating 
the phj^sical and moral misery of mankind ; and he 
looked upon education as the principal mean to ac- 
complish this. His earnest pleadings for education, as 
the chief factor in the elevation and consequent relief 
of the masses, brought conviction to all, high and low, 
ruled and rulers, so that he is justly called the " father 
of popular education." Through him, Germany became 
the land of pedagogy; but his influence went far bej^ond 
the limits of German lands. 

The family seemed to him the proper center of all 
educational efforts; but although he went too far in 
this view, and although, in his own direct labors, he 
aimed his efforts mainly at the school, he never lost 
sight, not even theoretically, of his great discovery 
that human nature itself must dictate the principles 
of education. 

This discovery alone, urged by him again and again, 
with the eloquence of earnestness, upon all whom his 
words and deeds could reach, would have sufficed to 
make him one of the greatest benefactors of mankind. 
He thus became the inaugurator of a new epoch in 
education, the epoch of purely humane education; he 
created the possibility of basing the science of peda- 
gog}^ upon anthropology and natural science; of making 
it, indeed, itself one of the branches of natural science. 

His views of the nature and destiny of man were 
rather vague, but, on the whole, correct. They were 
not reached by careful philosophical analysis, but 
seemed to have sprung up in him, waked into existence 
by the magic power of his genius. Man appeared to 



PESTALOZZr. 107 

Pestalozzi in every direction as an organism ; an inde- 
pendent organism, as far as he alone is concerned; an 
organic part, if viewed with reference to society, the 
race, or the universe. To enter into harmony with the 
whole — into communion with the Being of beings, with 
God — without losing his individuality, seemed to Pes- 
talozzi man's highest destiny. Justice and love were 
to him man's highest virtues, in the intercourse with 
others; self-reliance the highest quality, with reference 
to. himself. 

For the education of man as an individual, as a sepa- 
rate individuality, Pestalozzi found the general formula 
in the simple and single word — evolution, development. 
Whatever powers man has, must be developed harmoni- 
ously, so as to form a harmonious, well-balanced whole. 
All individual development manifests itself as activity, 
as self-activity. This self-activity has two phases : one 
from without inward, receptive, acquisitive, learning; 
the other from within outward, expressive, productive, 
creative. 

The former, the receptive phase of self-activity, is 
designated by the term intuition — anschauung^ looking 
at; and the instruments which the mind uses, when 
engaged in it, are the senses. This phase will always 
precede the expressive, reproductive, or creative activ- 
ity; it forms the basis, the foundation of the latter. 
Hence Pestalozzi's great principle: All instruction must 
be intuitional — anschaulich — must reach the mind 
through its senses. This phase of activity engaged his 
attention almost exclusively, as far as his reformatory 
efforts in methods of teaching extended; and he fur- 
nished an ABC of instruction which, while it was liable 



108 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

to many improvements in form and scope, has never 
been assailed in its principles. He was well aware of 
the fact that this was only half the work required, and 
he labored hard to find an ABC of skill — of art, if yon 
choose — of the expressive phase of self-activity, but 
without success. To find this ABC was reserved for 
Froebel; but were not Pestalozzi's achievements work 
enough, as well as glory enough, for one man? 

He labored with great success to transform learning, 
the acquisition of knowledge, into an actual mental 
assimilation. And, in doing this, he gained another 
great point. He established beyond controversy that 
the ultimate aim of instruction is not to furnish man 
with knowledge and skill, but that these are valuable 
mainly as means to develop the mind and other powers 
of the human being. In other words, the material of 
instruction was to be used, in the first and foremost 
place, as an instrument for the development of the 
organism. 

Hence, the mode in which the learner approaches 
the material of instruction or, respectively, the mode 
in which it is brought to him, is of the greatest impor- 
tance, since it determines the beneficial or injurious, 
the furthering or hindering efiect of instruction, with 
reference to mental development. Now, for the best 
way, he looks in the nature of man — that is, in the 
insight which the anthropological and psychological 
study of man has furnished. Thus he chose the only 
way that leads to truth ; thus he freed pedagogy from 
all preconceived and dogmatical limitations, from all 
arbitrary fetters; made of it a natural science, to live 
and grow, henceforth, like other natural sciences. Thus 



PESTALOZZI. 109 

he laid low and ejected from the school the evil spirits 
of pedantry, that claim to be in full possession of truth, 
and form an insuperable barrier to progress; and in- 
stalled in their stead that modest search for truth which 
moves always, and always forward. 

What a great stride forward he himself made will 
appear even frorn a superficial review of his principles 
of teaching, as laid down in his last two books. He 
begins with the training of the senses, with perception, 
or, better, with perceptions; from these he leads the 
child gradually, surely, and as much as possible by its 
own efforts, to conceptions, judgments, conclusions. 
Every idea the child possesses has grown from the 
seed, and grown strong in indigenous soil, in the 
child's own mind. There is no pushing, no cramming, 
no pouring in ; but only growth — healthy, vigorous, con- 
tinuous, natural growth. What the child can not grasp 
is not forced upon it ; whatever is beyond its comprehen- 
sion is left for future time and increased power. 

Specially, he proceeds always from known things to 
related unknown things, so that the learner may ever 
find a place for the new acquisition, may be enabled to 
bring the new acquisition into organic connection with 
what he already has or, rather, with what he already is. 
Abstract ideas grow gradually, almost laboriously, from 
concrete notions. He is a declared enemy of all mere 
verbiage, and fails to look upon parrot-like repetition 
of a statement or of an idea as knowledge. On the 
contrary, he asks that the child must develop the idea 
in its own mind, by its own self-active effort, before it 
can appreciate and, consequently, before it ought to 
receive the symbol or sign — the word. 



110 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

In the examination of objects he always proceeds 
from the whole, i. c, from the first impression, to the 
parts, ^. e., to careful analysis. In the building-up of 
ideas, in comparison and classification, he made sure, 
first, of particulars, elements; and proceeded slowly, 
gradually, continuously to general, more comprehensive 
ideas and names. At the same time, he aimed con- 
stantly at organic connection between the subject and 
the object, between the learner and the things learned; 
and strove to establish a similar connection between 
the various branches of instruction and practice. 

Again, he insists upon constant self-activity on the 
part of the child. He never does for the child what 
it can do for itself, because only its own work, only 
the direct exercise of its owm powers, wall give strength 
to these and increase their substance, as it w^ere. His 
(the teacher's) activity is only directing or guiding, 
only impelling or inducing, as the case may require. 
This is one of Pestalozzi's greatest points, and so 
prominent that Benecke, whom I have had occasion 
to mention in a previous lecture, says of Pestalozzi's 
method : " He aims throughout at self-active growth of 
insight, in continuous progress and exhaustive com- 
pleteness." And Schwarz, a noted writer on pedagog- 
ical subjects, says of him : " He has cut a new road by 
the exercise of the powers in limited spheres, on a 
limited number of objects; from earliest youth, in every 
station of life, he wants to lead man to his greatest 
good, to his divine destiny. Every one is to be brought 
to a full appreciation of his own powers; and a pure, 
true appreciation of his worth is to bring him to the 
noblest use of his powers." 



PESTALOZZL 111 

It would be to sin against truth, and thus to deprive 
history of its greatest power for good, if the faults of 
the great man were overlooked here. Some of these 
have already been hinted in this and the previous 
lecture. Among these are the want of caution and 
circumspection, of organizing talent and practical com- 
mon sense ; and more, perhaps, than these, his ignorance 
of pedagogic thoughts and deeds in previous times. He 
only knew the great misery around him, and Rousseau 
and his own good heart drove him to sacrifice himself 
in efforts to alleviate it. 

But there are some other, perhaps minor faults, that 
are important enough to be mentioned here. Among 
these, his exclusive reliance upon the family, as an 
educational agent, stands at the head. Aside from the 
practical impossibility of educating a number of chil- 
dren of various ages in the family alone, this error 
of his shows an almost entire disregard of the claims 
of society upon the young human being, and of the 
necessity of training it, as early as possible, for social 
relations, for free intercourse with equals. 

Again, short-sightedness or want of scope is mani- 
fested in the- reduction of all sensuous impressions to 
number^ form, and imrd. Certainly there are many 
other categories of sensual existence besides number, 
form, and word. Even if we look upon them symbolic- 
ally, viewing number and form as the signs of imjyressive 
agents, and ivord as the sign of expressive action, it seems 
difficult to force all that impresses us and all our modes 
of expression within these terms. 

Again, the use of mechanical exercises in enunciation 
and speaking had become a sort of superstition with 



112 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

him. He used them to such a morbid excess that they 
contributed much to his defeats, inasmuch as his prac- 
tice in this respect was directly opposed to his theory. 
This led him, too, in his propositions concerning the 
teaching of geography, history, anthropology, and nat- 
ural science, into an artificial mechanism, a mind- 
killing verbiage, and memorizing of long lists of names 
that were as far removed from Pestalozzianism as dark- 
ness is from light. 

His admirable principle that, in the study of objects, 
we should proceed from the near to the remote, caused 
him to forget that things may be too near for convenient 
and accurate observation, and misled him into the per- 
nicious practice of beginning with the child's own body, 
a proceeding which, by insuring failure at the start, 
could not fail to bring his ideas into disrepute. 

As akin to his over-estimation of the family as an 
educational factor, we should note, too, his over-estima- 
tion of the mother as the educator in the family. In this 
respect, the father seems to have no existence at all for 
him. This fault may be due to his own early education, 
and to the peculiar conditions of the society in which he 
lived and for which he worked; but even a little philo- 
sophical insight might have saved him from this griev- 
ous error. If it was his excellence to be what he was by 
his heart, it surely was his fault that his heart exercised 
a too despotic control over his head. 

Thus it happened that, as a practical teacher, he stood 
far below medibcrity. He taught without plan; cared 
neither for time nor for the fatigue of the children; 
neglected reading and writing; neither developed nor 
repeated ; entirely disregarded order and expediency in 



PESTALOZZl. 113 

the occupations of the children ; worked only with the 
masses or classes, and took no heed of individuals; 
wasted much of his time in having the children repeat 
after him sentences which they did not understand; 
and, even in these exercises, neglected correctness and 
euphony of speech. 

And yet, in spite of all these faults, he is the founder 
of modern pedagogy. He is this by his indefatigable 
zeal, his Christ-like self-denial, his enthusiasm for truth 
and human happiness. These qualities charmed all who 
came in his vicinity, and kindled in them similar feel- 
ings, induced them to improve upon his virtues and to 
steer past his faults. 

As Jessen has said of him, "he was an enlightening 
creative hero of education ; an eagle who, as Dante says 
of Homer, vanquishes all in his flight. No one has, like 
him, set the world ablaze in a holy enthusiasm for the 
great task of ennobling the human race; no one has, 
like him, shaken the stolid world and overcome its 
resistance. He was a man great through his faith in 
his ideal, great in his aims, great in the self-denial 
with which he fought for his ideal, great in his zeal 
to alleviate human suffering — a zeal which had be- 
come a part of his very being. Thus Pestalozzi's great- 
ness consists, perhaps, more in the impulse he gave 
than it does in his direct achievements." 



H. P.-IO. 



LECTURE XL 

FREDERIC FROEBEL — KINDERGARTEN CULTURE. 

The most enthusiastic admirer and disciple of Pesta- 
lozzi was, fortunatel}^, a man singularly predisposed by 
his training to complete the task left unfinished by the 
great master. This man was Frederic Froebel. ^' 

Like Pestalozzi, he found the aim of education in har- 
monious development, in the production of well-balanced 
human beings ; like Pestalozzi, he looked for the princi- 
ples of education in the laws of human nature ; like 
Pestalozzi, he required growth from within outward, 
and relied, therefore, upon self-activity on the part of 
the learner, as the indispensable condition of success in 
educational labors. He accepted fully and unreservedly 
all that Pestalozzi had done, and built upon the law of 
intuition as a broad and firm basis. To this, however, 
he added the law of the "connection of contrasts." At 
the same time, he invented the ABC of the productive 
phase of self-activity, and showed how the exercise of the 



^ For a biographical sketch, I refer the reader to the preface 
of my Kindergarten Culture, 

(114) 



FROEBEL. 115 

^productive serves not only to strengthen the receptive 
powers and to enrich the mind and heart, but how it 
alone can render the acquisition of knowledge useful. 

From the very beginning, he would have these two 
phases of self-activity — the receptive and the produc- 
tive — go hand in hand. Every new intuition is to be 
used in new forms of expression, and to be combined in 
every possible manner with previous acquisitions, in 
more and more complicated, more and more directly 
useful productions. He keeps the learner ever busy, 
imitating and inventing with the ever-increasing stock 
of knowledge ; and ever increasing the stock of ideas 
with the aid of imitations and inventions, in accordance 
with the law of the " connection of contrasts." 

The harmonious development of man requires not only 
knowledge, but also skill; not only ideas, bat also the 
application of ideas. Nay, if we consider that knowl- 
edge manifests itself usefully only through skill, that 
ideas enter life only through their application, we are 
to some extent justified in looking upon the latter as 
more important. Knowledge without skill, like a stuffed 
elephant, may challenge our astonishment, but can not 
exert any influence in life; it is as unproductive of 
either good or evil as the sword in the hands of a statue. 
The education of children, more especially in schools, 
has suffered for centuries, and particularly in modern 
times, from the fatal one-sidedness of paying almost ex- 
clusive attention to knowledge. Our time, as Froebel 
and his followers express it, is sick from a surfeit of 
knowledge. These truisms lay in the consciousness of 
thinking pedagogues long before Froebel — from Plato 
to Pestalozzi — but it was reserved for Froebel to let 



116 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

the consciousness ripen into the deed by his invention 
of the Kindergarten. 

Pestalozzi, wonderfully aroused by Rousseau's vigorous 
writings, and still more by the misery of the ignorant 
and unskilled masses, found the way of educating the 
child to independence in intuition, in the acquisition 
of ideas, and invented the ABC of knowledge; but his 
efforts to find an ABC of skill were fruitless, although 
he devoted himself to the task with conscious longing. 
Froebel, however, animated by an equally intense phi- 
lanthropy, but endowed with more philosophical insight 
and more thorough knowledge, unveiled also this secret, 
and indicates, in his writings on " The Education of 
Man" the way to independence in skill, in the art of 
doing and inventing, in productive, creative activity. 

With his predecessors in the mastership of pedagogy, 
he holds that education must begin at birth, and seeks 
the laws of pedagogic jDractice in the natural being and 
doing of the child. He observed how the latter, from 
the first dawn of consciousness, is ever eager to apply 
the acquired intuition — to make use of them — partly 
by simply reproducing them, partly by combining them 
with others formerly gained, in order to attain some- 
thing new, or to enjoy the results of its creative activ- 
ity. At the same time, he observed that the child, as 
a living being, is attracted most by living things, and, 
in the next place, by moving or movable objects. 

These and similar observations led him to the inven- 
tion of a number of gifts or playthings for little children. 
In the construction of these gifts he was guided by his 
law of the "connection of contrasts." He holds that 
we owe all our knowledge, primarily, to contrasts in the 



FROEBEL. 117 

qualities of surrounding objects. By these contrasts our 
attention is drawn to the objects, .to their comparison, 
their observation; without them, comparison and ob- 
servation — mental life, indeed — would be impossible, 
unthinkable. 

These contrasts, however, are brought together again, 
reduced to a common idea by intervening degrees of the 
same quality in other objects. The discovery of these 
intervening degrees he designates by the name, "con- 
nection of contrasts," a process by which the mutual 
relations in the qualities of objects are brought out, 
and the unity, the oneness in them is unveiled. All 
thinking, he maintains, is reducible to this law ; every 
step in the history of ideas rests upon it ; even in 
emotional life, in the formation of taste and character, 
and in physical development, it holds good. * 

The gifts, or playthings, consist of balls, cylinders, 
cones, variously dissected cubes, quadrilateral and tri- 
angular tablets, sticks, mats for weaving, etc. By 
means of these the child is gradually and pleasantly 
introduced into the w^orld of ideas, gains notions of cor- 
poreality, of color, shape, size, number, etc. At the 
same time, it learns to use them in imitating and, 
consequently, fixing ideas gained from other objects, in 
inventing new, more or less abstract combinations of 
the component parts of the gift. 

The results of the child's more or less self-active 
efforts are classified by Froebel as forms of cognition, of 



■^For a fall discussion and illustrations of this law, as well 
as for a detailed description of Froebel's gifts, I refer the reader 
to my Kindergarten Culture. 



118 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

life^ and of beauty. By the forms of cognition the child 
obtains and fixes new ideas, gains knowledge; by the 
forms of life it reproduces or expresses, more or less 
faithfully, ideas gained from surrounding objects; and 
by the forms of beauty, or symmetrical arrangements 
of the parts of the gift, it trains its inventive powers 
and forms its taste. 

Thus the third gift, a two-inch cube dissected into 
eight one-inch cubes, offers combinations of its compo- 
nent parts — forvw of cognition — by which the child 
obtains ideas of number, shape, size, and relations of 
position. Again, it enables the child to build, in rude 
outline, tables, chairs, walls, ladders, bridges, and other 
forms of life; and the eight cubical blocks offer much 
scope in producing a variety of symmetrical arrange- 
ments, or forms of beauty. 

He lays great stress, too, upon the development of 
physical vigor, grace, and skill, by means of calisthenic 
and gymnastic exercises; upon the cultivation of taste, 
scope, and power in language, by means of declamation, 
song, and lively conversation ; and upon the simultane- 
ous training of hand and head in imitative and in- 
ventive drawing on slates and paper, specially prepared 
and ruled for the guidance of the little artists. 

A most important feature of his invention we have, 
again, in the social games, and in the fact that all the 
occupations of the kindergarten are managed in such a 
way as to unfold and train the social nature of the child. 
From the very beginning, the child is taught by direct 
experience that it finds the richest source of happiness 
in doing good — in usefulness; and that it gains strength 
for greater usefulness in the free, voluntary union with 



FROEBEL. 119 

others, in the social subordination to common purposes. 
At the same time, the kindergarten takes care not to 
drown individualit}^, biit, by enlarging its scope, con- 
tinually offers new and strong incentives for its full 
development. 

Froebel looks upon the little children as organic 
beings, whose growth must be led and followed by the 
educator as the growth of plants is led and followed by 
the gardener; hence the name kindergarten — garden 
for children. It is true that he would have an actual 
garden connected with these institutions, so that the 
child may, by direct observation, become familiar with 
the laws of growth, and learn to know and love nature, 
of which it, too, is an exponent. Still, such a garden, 
while it is eminently desirable, is not an essential 
feature of the kindergarten, since there are many other 
ways to accomplish similar results. Among these, the 
cultivation of plants in pots or boxes, and occasional 
excursions into the fields and forests, occupy a promi- 
nent place. 

. Froebel, however, would make the kindergarten not 
only a place for the proper education of little children, 
but also a training-school for mothers and nurses. He 
appeals most earnestly to mothers to visit the kinder- 
garten, to attend its teachings, to practice there the 
art of bringing up the little ones; and he would estab- 
lish institutions in which young girls can prepare 
themselves for the difficult and responsible duties of a 
mother or nurse. Fortunately, his appeals were not 
unheeded; for Europe, and more especially Germany, 
can boast of a number of such training-schools, doing 
admirable work, increasing daily in scope and influ- 



120 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

ence, and sending out annually hundreds of enthusi- 
astic and skillful missionaries in the good cause. 

Again, Froebel's plans did not end with the kinder- 
garten. Finding the body pedagogic diseased, he did not 
propose to cure it by the mere addition of a healthy 
member, which would be doomed to become a prey to 
the general degeneracy of that body ; but he meant 
that the kindergarten should leaven the entire system 
of teaching children, at home and at school. He would 
have it used as an entering wedge to break down 
whatever is illogical, unnatural — nay, inhuman — in 
family and school education ; he would make it the 
forerunner of school and youth gardens, i. e., of institu- 
tions in which the learner is placed in the most favor- 
able circumstances for self-active, organic growth in 
every direction of his being, where knowledge and 
skill, saying and doing, theory and practice, go hand 
in hand at every stej:). 

Indeed, his labors have already brought forth rich 
fruit. Even a superficial review of the progress of edu- 
cational principles in modern times, yields abundant 
proof of the great influence that Froebel has exerted 
upon the spirit which animates this progress. Every- 
where we see the tendency to technical education; 
drawing forms a branch of instruction in all well- 
appointed school systems, even in our country ; calis- 
thenic and gymnastic exercises gain ground from day 
to day ; music cheers the souls of thousands of little 
learners, where a few years ago there was only the 
monotonous drawl of recitation or the excited tone of 
the rebuking teacher. 

Again, it can not be denied that the employment of 



FROEBEL. 121 

female teachers, particularly in elementary schools, is 
due, to a great extent, to Froebel's influence. He held 
that teaching the little ones is the natural calling of 
woman; that by her greater tenderness, her deeper 
sympathy for the yearnings of children, by her quicker 
perception of their needs and wants, by her more inti- 
mate relationship to the child, by her readier adapta- 
bility to its ways, by her more graceful movements 
and her more winning words, she is much better fitted 
than man — other circumstances being the same — to 
arouse the child to free obedience and eager self-activity, 
and to implant the seeds of love and purity in its 
heart. 

Similarly, the growing employment of love, good 
habit, and reason in discipline, in preference to brute 
force ; the greater attention paid to the plays of chil- 
dren ; the gaining practice of co-education of the sexes, 
at least in elementary schools; the war against one- 
sidedness in education; the greater respect paid to 
child-nature; the increasing value attached to self- 
activity and individuality ; the demand for less routine 
and more work in the branches of instruction; the 
gradual decline of artifice before the claims of nature ; 
the steady retreat of machine-teaching before natural 
development, are unquestionably due, in a high degree, 
to Froebel's influence. 

It is a significant fact, when we consider what stress 
was laid by Froebel upon the training of women for the 
important work of early education, that, both in this 
country and in Europe, the leading apostleship for the 
new education was assumed by women. In Europe, the 
baronness Bertha von Marenholtz-Buelow has devoted 
H. p.— u. 



122 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

her life to th^ diffusion of Froebel's teachings. She has 
established kindergartens in France, Belgium, Holland, 
Switzerland, England, and Italy; and Austria has even 
incorporated the kindergarten with her public school 
system. In America, Miss Eliza P. Peabody and her 
sister, Mrs. Horace Mann, first drew public attention to 
the new education by the publication of their ^^Kinder- 
garten Guide,''^ and by the establishment of a genuine 
English kindergarten in Boston, a few years ago. 

Thus the good work is progressing nobly; and the 
regeneration of education, on the basis of Froebel's 
ideas, is slowly and surely finding its way into the 
home, as well as into the school. 



LECTURE XII. 



SUMMING UP — CONCLUSION. 



We see from the preceding lectures how the Caucasian 
race has gradually and surely approached the principles 
of development or evolution in the work of education. 
It appears that these principles were already, in a de- 
gree, felt and followed hy the Greeks; on the other 
hand, even the superficial student of the educational 
systems of our day will often come across practices that 
seem to be fully as far removed from the laws of de- 
velopment as Chinese education has been from time 
immemorial. 

This must needs be so, since the roots of our civiliza- 
tion lie far down in Greek soil; and as far as our 
civilization contains truth, Greek culture must have 
contained the seeds of truth. For truth may displace 
or destroy falsehood, may even groAV strong upon it, 
but never can come from it. Nor can we, on the other 
hand, hope ever to reach full, unalloyed, absolute truth; 
error ever will surround us, and eat its way into the 
inmost life of many, to goad the race on to that con- 
stant search, that eager yearning for truth, which con- 
stitutes progress. 

(123) 



124 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

The Greeks emancipated education from the curse of 
caste and asserted the claims of individuality; not, it 
is true, without a grand final struggle between Plato, 
who would sacrifice the individual to the state, and 
who calls for an equal, common, public education, and 
Aristotle, the champion of individual liberty and of the 
sacredness of family ties, with which public education 
never must interfere. At the same time, the Greeks 
teach the race to look upward beyond the realms of 
merely sensual existence, establish high ideals of edu- 
cation — "the Good and the Beautiful" — and demand 
harmony in culture; while their greatest teachers, 
Pythagoras and Socrates, pave the way to sound natural 
and rational methods of instruction. 

Subsequently, the excessive idealism of Greek culture 
found a corrective in the sturdy realism, the practical 
common sense of the Romans; and when Rome lay 
dying of her own gross sins, Christianity came to save 
the highest achievements of the race, and to fertilize 
them with new elements of health and vigor. 

Christianity, a child of Semitic civilization — a civil- 
ization that looked with the greatest reverence upon 
the family, and considered the fear of God as the 
highest virtue — engrafted upon European culture the 
principle of strict humanity, liberated it from the bane 
of arbitrary and accidental external distinctions among 
men, raised woman to full equality with her mate before 
God, and taught respect for children, the framers of the 
future. 

And when, in the middle ages, its high teachings 
had been misapplied by the selfishness of man for 
sordid and ambitious ends, or perverted by diseased 



CONCLUSION. 125 

superstition into a curse, blasting earthly happiness 
and paralyzing usefulness in real life, philosophy came 
to the rescue, dispelled the clouds, the Sun of Truth 
was again revealed, and his restoring and reforming 
rays aroused European civilization to a new and better 
life. Progress, that had slumbered so long, awoke to 
new vigor and made rapid strides under the leadership 
of Bacon, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and a host 
of others. 

Through the' influence of these great men, pure, 
unalloyed humanity became the soul; the harmonious 
development of well-balanced, self-dependent, vigorous, 
and virtuous human beings, the aim of educational 
efforts. Man was shown to be an organic being, subject 
in all his manifestations of existence to ordinary, natu- 
ral laws; growing, developing, in all directions of his 
being, organically, from within outward; and all edu- 
cational ends and means that are not in accordance 
with these conquests of philosophy were proved to be 
pernicious, and are gradually yielding before the su- 
preme power of better insight. 

Among the many prominent mediators of this better 
insight, we have singled out Comenius, Francke, Pesta- 
lozzi, and Froebel, each one representing some important 
phase in the growth of a school practice, corresponding 
in scope and spirit with the laws and aims of the devel- 
oping education : Comenius as the pioneer of vernacular 
schools, of intuitional teaching, and of analytico-syn- 
thetic methods; Francke, as the founder of scientific 
and technical schools, the champion of individuality 
and of the greater importance of training the pupil's 
powers and forming his character, compared with mere 



126 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

instruction; Pestalozzi, as the father of popular educa- 
tion and expounder of natural methods in the acquisi- 
tion of knowledge ; and Froebel, as the apostle of self- 
activity, of the productive side in child-nature, and of 
female influence in the work of education. 

After thus reviewing some of the leading features in 
the history of developing education, it behooves us to 
ask ourselves to what extent our own school system, our 
immediate schools, our personal principles and practice, 
satisfy in tendency, scope, and character the require- 
ments of the "new education," so that our work may 
reap direct benefits from our study. Of course, only the 
first of these, our school system, is open for our common 
consideration; and, with reference to this, I beg leave 
to offer a few average results of my own personal 
observation. 

It is a source of just congratulation to the Ameri- 
can citizen, that the political and social institutions 
of his country are more favorable, nearer to humanity 
than those of any other great nation in the world. 
Our Constitution grants equal political rights to all 
citizens, and respects personal freedom to such an ex- 
tent that it leaves the conscience of all men free, with 
reference to religious opinions and practices. Socially, 
we judge men by their inner worth and by tl:ieir 
achievements, caring not for external or accidental 
distinctions, except where fashion has imported folly 
from abroad. Even tlie exorbitant value placed upon 
wealth has its root in this, since wealth is the com- 
monest reward of excellence. Hence, too, woman — 
showing herself in so many activities the equal of 
man — occupies among us a higher social position, and 



CONCLUSION. 127 

exerts a greater influence upon the general welfare, 
than in any other civilized country. Even children 
are treated with greater consideration and looked upon 
with more respect than elsewhere. 

These things have developed in the American citizen 
an almost instinctive independence of character, which 
is exceedingly favorable to the development of strong 
individualities. Add to this the traditional energy and 
endurance of the American, which he owes to the early 
struggles of his forefathers with a reluctant wilderness 
and an obstinate race, and to the glorious war of the 
revolution; add our great national power and the vast- 
ness of our resources that render us wholly independent 
of other nations, and there seems to be no reason why 
our country should not stand foremost in culture, and 
our educational systems be the best, nearest to the ideal 
of the great teachers whom we have reviewed. 

On the other hand, the doctrine of equal rights may 
produce jealousy in those less favored with capacity or 
success, and may bring about an equalization, particu- 
larly in educational efforts, which is adverse to the 
assertion and development of individuality. Excessive 
respect and consideration shown to the 3'oung may 
breed a self-satisfied conceit, which, in its turn, brings 
forth indolence. The ease of making a living may 
strengthen this indolence, and render man content 
with the acquisition of wealth and comfort, or pervert 
his energy into a nervous chase after money, which 
gives him the means to plunge into a whirlpool of 
gross, exciting, sensual pleasures. 

Thus, the very blessings that are justly our greatest 
boast, expose us to a self-conceit, an indolence, a sensu- 



128 HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY. 

ality, an egotism, that may pervert those very blessings 
into curses, if we are not ever humbly watchful of our- 
selves. Add to this, again, the fact that we owe to our 
mother-country, England, an almost bigoted respect for 
authority and precedent; a conservativism that hangs 
ever like lead upon the skirts of progress ; a utilitarian 
tendency that worships the real, while it scorns the 
ideal or smiles at it, and we can readily understand 
that much energy will yet have to be expended, if the 
manhood of our country is to justify the hopes and 
expectations of its youth, 

Yet, if we take our school system, the mightiest 
fixctor of the future, as a criterion, we have reason to 
feel reassured and encouraged. It is true, our school 
system still struggles with many difficulties and suffers 
from a host of faults. So many parents and school 
trustees have no idea of the importance or the aims 
of true education. A great number of teachers look 
upon their work as a temporary, convenient mode of 
making a living. The school aims, in so many in- 
stances, almost exclusively at directly visible results, 
and crushes all efforts at the development of mental 
and physical vigor, of individuality and character, 
under the dead weight of percentage; it would force 
all the pupils to do a certain number of things equally 
well, and thus hampers progress, favors show, and does 
nothing very thoroughly nor very far; it reduces the 
teacher to a recitation machine and the pupil to a 
memorizing contrivance; it does, indeed, many things 
that are useless or injurious, and neglects many things 
that are indispensable, if education is to prepare the 
young for full usefulness and true happiness. 



CONCLUSION. 129 

On the other hand, our people as a whole, at least 
in the states that have enjoyed the benefits of a common 
school system, seem to be aware of the necessity of 
schools, seem to feel that good comes or can come from 
them. This feeling may, in many cases, be quite in- 
distinct and ill-defined; but it is sufficiently keen to 
render them ever ready to sacrifice wealth for the 
maintenance and improvement of their schools. No 
country in the world, except, perhaps, some portions 
of Switzerland, can boast of expending so much for 
schools, in proportion to the cost of other public con- 
cerns, as these favored states; and all the states of the 
Union are gradually but surely drifting to this desirable 
condition. 

The wish to send to school is so general and grows 
so rapidly, that the necessity of compulsory laws be- 
comes ever less urgent. Our school-houses are built 
commodiously, with fair provisions for light, air, heat, 
and for comfort in the seats. Our school appliances, 
within the narrow but expanding scope of our subjects 
of instruction, are good and improving. In the methods 
of instruction, imperfect as they are, much of the work 
is thrown upon the learner — often, indeed, more than 
his powers justify. The demand for play-grounds, for 
physical training, for respect to the development of 
the body, for technical instruction, for a more intimate 
intercourse with nature, is steadily increasing. In dis- 
cipline there is a growing tendency to do away with 
force and mere authority, and to rely more and more 
upon insight and good habits on the part of the pupil ; 
although, of late, a cheap sort of military discipline 
has been retarding sound progress quite considerably. 



130 HISTORY OP PEDAGOGY. 

At the same time, the number of parents and school 
trustees that appreciate the requirements of a truly 
good education is gaining from year to year. And, best 
of all, the number of teachers Avho feel the divinity of 
their calling, and who are willing to forego more lucra- 
tive or less trying occupations for the sake of devoting 
their lives to this, is rapidly swelling, thanks to the 
liberality of the people and to the influence of normal 
schools. Before the stout hearts, the clear heads, and 
the skillful hands of these men and Avomen, the ene- 
mies of progress and of a rational, natural, humane 
education — active and passive, animate and inanimate, 
be their name ignorance or incapacity, pedantry or pre- 
tense, selfishness or prejudice — will be repelled into 
the past as steadily and surely as time marches into 
the future. 



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